


The Kink-a-Day Calendar

by GwendolynGrace



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Animagus Bestiality, Bathtub Sex, Bodyswap, Crossdressing Kink, Daisy Chaining, Drug Use, F/M, Food Sex, Genderswap, Ghost Sex, Light BDSM, M/M, Many Kinks, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mistaken Identity, Multi, Oral Sex, Orgy, Outdoor Sex, Pegging, Phone Sex, Polyamory, Polyjuice Potion, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Experimentation, Shaving, Sibling Incest, Strangulation, Twincest, auto, foreign objects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 03:44:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 31
Words: 71,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3342317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwendolynGrace/pseuds/GwendolynGrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Peter Pettigrew has an idea that generates much more trouble, pleasure, and self-discovery than any of them anticipated. </p>
<p>This fic was originally written for the "Pervy Werewolf" LJ Community's "Lusty Month of May" fest, in which authors were challenged to post every day in May with a different kink, involving Remus Lupin. I chose instead to write a single story, connected throughout each "chapter" - because I'm insane. </p>
<p>There are many different kinks and many different pairings in this fic! Caveat Lector.</p>
<p>NOTE: This work of fiction was published in 2004, so there are canonical errors and things we did not yet know!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Peter has an idea, and the premise for the next 30 chapters is revealed

Peter laid out the idea without flinching. The others stared at each other for a few minutes, as if trying to see whose disbelief would be greater. Sirius recovered the power of speech first. ‘You have got to be joking.’

‘It would sell, though, you know it would sell,’ Peter insisted.

‘It would certainly sell,’ James replied. ‘Us up the river! We could get expelled!’

‘Like you won’t get expelled for being an unregistered Animagus, James?’ Remus asked mildly. ‘I like the idea. I think it has possibilities.’

‘A “Kink-a-day Calendar?”’ James’s voice cracked. ‘Lily would kill me.’

‘Actually, Lily’s all up for it,’ Peter said, blushing. ‘She volunteered to, er, help. Modeling and so on.’

‘I have died and gone to heaven,’ Sirius announced, rising to his feet with excitement. ‘James, now we have to do it.’

‘Twat. You just want to see Lily in knickers.’

‘You bet I do,’ Sirius said, but to his surprise, he wasn’t alone. 

‘Of course we do,’ Remus said softly.

James stared at him. ‘Everyone wants to see Lily in knickers?’ They nodded.

‘The whole school. Hell, I’d bet half of Wizarding Britain would pay for pictures of Lily in, um, compromising positions.’

James gaped at them, shaking his head.

‘Then it’s settled,’ Peter said brightly. ‘Might as well start by listing the kinks we need to research.’

‘Research?’ Sirius’s head snapped up.

‘Well, yes, Pads,’ Remus answered guilelessly, kneeling on the bed behind him. ‘We’re not all experts on every kind of kink there is, are we? We’re not going to be able to produce this calendar without a lot of…fieldwork.’ He grinned like a predator and snaked his arms around Sirius from behind, resting his hands on the other boy’s pectorals.

‘Hey, that tickles,’ Sirius began to say, but then Remus began feathering the back of his neck with kisses and his protest turned into a moan of pleasure. Remus pulled on Sirius’s shirt to lift the light cotton away from his skin, pushed his hands underneath the rolled cloth, traced his nails over Sirius’s nipples and then pinched lightly. ‘Oh….’

Sirius leaned back into Remus’s arms, then felt himself sinking lower, onto the bed, and Remus threw one leg over his waist. Pinned, he reached up to pull Remus’s mouth down onto his own. Remus pushed their pelvises together, grinding back and forth, and Sirius’s hands wandered down Remus’s back to his ass. They continued snogging, hands moving, oblivious to their roommates. Sirius pushed up, and they rolled across the bed. Remus locked his legs around Sirius’s waist and they rubbed against each other rapidly. 

‘Oh, yeah,’ Sirius groaned, breath coming in short pants now, and Remus chuckled low in his throat. They went to work on each other’s mouths with their tongues, licking, sampling, never ceasing the motions of their groins. ‘Right there, yeah, right there….’

Peter exchanged a faintly disgusted look with James. As one, they stepped forward to draw the curtains around Sirius’s bed. The lovers took no notice.

‘Right,’ said Peter over the muffled sounds of lovemaking within. ‘That’s one kink right there: exhibitionist poufters.’

 

TBC….


	2. In which the boys research their kinks

‘Can we do bondage and domination as separate entries?’ Peter asked a few days later in the library.

‘I think so,’ Remus answered with a shrug. ‘They’re often done together, but they’re not the same thing.’

‘What about sadomasochism, then?’ Sirius asked. ‘Split that out, too, do you think?’

‘Shh,’ James cautioned, as Madam Pince gave them a baleful glance from her desk. They were sitting in a small grouping of sofas and chairs before a snug little fireplace, making their list per Peter’s suggestion.

‘Okay, so with those four as separate kinks, we’ve got…’ Peter ran his thumb down the page, ‘forty-five. Lads, I never knew it was possible to be so perverted.’

‘Well, only if someone has all of them….still, 365’s a long way to go, isn’t it?’ James tapped his quill against his cheek. ‘Maybe if we took some of the large categories and—’

‘—Broke them down?’ Remus jumped in. ‘Yeah, I was thinking about that, myself. Toys, Fetishes, even Role-playing and bondage…there are a lot of sub-categories in there. I bet we could double the number, easily. But that still only gets us a quarter of the way through the year.’

‘Well, we’ll just have to keep looking, won’t we?’ Sirius shrugged and got to his feet. ‘Remus, come on, we’ve got Runes.’

Remus looked about to disagree, but then he took the hand Sirius offered and used it to pull himself out of the leather couch. ‘You two have another free hour before Charms, so see what you can find back in the stacks.’

At James and Peter’s nods, Sirius and Remus gathered up their bags and books and left the library.

‘Sirius, we don’t have class, mmff….’ Remus began, but his protest was swallowed when Sirius pushed him against the wall and pressed his tongue inside the other’s mouth. 

‘I know,’ he answered into Remus’s ear when he came up for air. ‘But talking about all those kinks…makes me want to do you right now.’

‘Men’s room, men’s room, then,’ Remus panted, nodding. ‘In front of James and Peter’s one thing, but Merlin, Sirius, anyone could….’

Sirius didn’t answer; he just tugged on Remus’s hand and made a beeline for the nearest bathroom. They crashed through the door, but then took a few more cautious moments to check the urinals and under all the cubicle doors to make sure they were alone.

‘Last one,’ Sirius ordered. ‘S’got more room, up against the wall.’ Remus didn’t need to be told twice. In moments, with the door locked behind them, Sirius had Remus back in the same position as in the corridor, only this time, he was busily pulling Remus’s robes up to his waist, reaching out for Remus’s trouser fly, unzipping, plunging his hand into the gap and unbuttoning the single button of his boxers. Remus’s prick popped out immediately, as if it had been held in place only by the limitations of its fabric prison. 

Sirius dropped to his knees in the cramped cubicle, angling Remus slightly so that he could hold on without hitting his elbows against the toilet. He kissed the underside of Remus’s cock, licking along the line provided by the purplish vein. Then, as he reached the tip, he opened his mouth wide and tried to relax his throat muscles. No good; he still gagged a bit, so he pulled back just enough for comfort and began to suck.

Remus alternated between lifting onto his toes and bending his knees, trying to help Sirius establish rhythm. He pushed his fingertips against the back of Sirius’s scalp, guiding forward, backward, hoping Sirius would feel the subtle signals. Sirius tried to keep up, but Remus’s prick seemed to have a life of its own; it jumped and twitched in reaction, and every once in a while popped out of Sirius’s mouth with an odd, comical squelching sound. Sirius finally put one hand on the shaft to steady it.

‘Oh,’ Remus said approvingly. ‘That’s…squeeze just a little….’ And Sirius did. Sensation flooded Remus’s groin, shutting down his brain. He slammed himself into the wall, back out into Sirius’s mouth, over and over, until he felt his climax subside. ‘Move over…’ he managed to say before he slid down the flagstones, weak-kneed with afterglow.

‘Better that time?’ Sirius asked tentatively. Remus opened eyes he hadn’t remembered closing. He held up one hand weakly and Sirius leaned up against his palm eagerly.

‘Best yet,’ Remus assured him. ‘You need a quick wank?’

TBC....


	3. In which Sirius and Remus finish what they started

‘Fuck yes,’ Sirius said, fumbling under his robes. Remus smiled and laughed silently.

Sirius pulled out his own penis and began to stroke himself. Remus stretched out his hand to join his lover’s, but Sirius slapped it away with his free one.

‘Don’t,’ he said, leaning back against the wall of the cubicle. ‘Just stay there, like that, with your knees open, and your little soldier all tired out…’ Remus’s eyebrows tried to join his hairline. ‘Okay, maybe not so worn out…’ Sirius amended as he saw the effect his words had on Remus’s cock. ‘But leave it there, for a minute,’ Sirius continued. ‘I just want to see you, like that…know I did that to you….’ Sirius pumped his shaft fervently, watching Remus across the cubicle. His robes were still up at his waist, his trousers were unzipped, and his prick, though standing again, was still dripping with stray drops from his just-completed orgasm. 

Watching Sirius watch him, Remus felt his own desire flare again. He tried to look at Sirius, but he could tell without even looking down that his cock was erect and ready, despite just being sucked off. He slowly inched his hands, which were resting on his knees, up his thighs toward his groin.

‘Not yet,’ Sirius pleaded, catching him out. ‘Leave it, I’ll…I promise….’

‘Sirius,’ Remus panted, ‘not that I don’t appreciate it, but love, if you keep that up, we’ll be stuck in here all day.’

‘Hang on, then…’ Sirius insisted. He let go of his own cock and shifted back onto his knees, holding up his robes out of the way. ‘Budge up,’ he instructed as he walked forward on his knees, penis bouncing with every shuffle. Remus tried not to laugh, but he shifted as far over as he could manage without running into the toilet.

‘Here,’ Sirius said, picking up Remus’s hand and placing it on his own prick. He then put his hand on Remus. ‘Together, okay?’

‘Yes,’ Remus breathed, eyes widening.

Before long they were kissing again, shifting awkwardly in the tight space to gain better grips on each other’s equipment. Remus would pump very fast, then slow, then fast again, while Sirius kept a more steady rhythm, building up speed with every stroke. 

‘Can…you…squeeze…a bit…more,’ Remus asked as he had a few minutes ago, between kisses and hard breathing. ‘Just…at the…base….’ And he demonstrated on Sirius.

‘Wow… yes,’ Sirius agreed, duplicating the effect. It took merely three strokes more for them both to come, one after the other, catching the splatter in their hands.

‘Does this count as fieldwork?’ Sirius asked on their way out of the bathroom? Remus kicked him.

TBC….


	4. In which Lily shares her talents

‘Lads, I think I’ve solved our problem,’ Peter announced at supper a few nights later. Meals in the Great Hall were always so calamitous, it was the perfect place for a private conversation.

‘And how do you think you’ve done that?’ James asked with genuine interest.

‘We’ll put up these,’ Peter replied, and with a flourish, he produced three parchment rolls, which he distributed across the table.

‘Notices?’ Remus frowned, reading them.

‘Yes, but look….’ 

They looked. It read:

ARE YOU READY TO MEET THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE? DO YOU SEEK ULTIMATE FULFILLMENT? DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO GET YOU THERE?

_MAGICAL MATCHMAKERS CAN HELP YOU FIND YOUR PERFECT MATE!_

THIS INCREDIBLE OFFER IS AVAILABLE FOR ONLY A TWO-SICKLE APPLICATION FEE. CONFIDENTIALITY GUARANTEED! TELL OUR MAGICAL MATCHMAKERS YOUR INNERMOST FANTASIES, YOUR DREAM-DATES, THE SECRETS OF YOUR SOUL, AND OUR CONJURING COUNSELORS WILL CONCOCT A ROMANCE TO STAND THE TEST OF TIME – JUST FOR YOU AND YOUR PERFECT PRINCE OR PRINCESS.

DON’T WAIT TO FIND YOUR DESTINY! SEND YOUR APPLICATIONS TODAY BY POSTAL OWL TO BOX 345, HOGSMEADE. INCLUDE YOUR NAME, AGE, SEX, AND A DESCRIPTION OF THE QUALITIES AND FANTASIES YOU LOOK FOR IN A MATE.

 

‘Two sickles, Peter?’ Remus frowned again. ‘Why charge at all?’

‘Makes it look more legitimate, doesn’t it?’ Peter shrugged. ‘Plus, it’ll pay for the owl box and all.’

‘And for supplies,’ Sirius put in sagely. ‘I’ve been thinking – a lot of these kinks require, well, _equipment_. Where are we going to get it all?’

‘Post order, for some of it,’ James answered. ‘But you make a good point, Padfoot. We’ll need to make some investments to make this idea pay off.’

‘What idea?’ Lily asked from over James’s shoulder. James jumped. Lily pushed her way between James and the third-year next to him. ‘Sorry, James. I got caught by Ermengard Dillygaff. She practically talked my ear off about Wind-control charms. Honestly. Oh, is this for the calendar?’ she asked in almost the same breath, catching sight of the parchment in James’s hand.

‘What do you think, Lil?’ Peter asked as she snatched it away from James and read it.

‘Mm… needs a bit more romance,’ she assessed. ‘You boys just have no idea how to woo a girl, have you?’

‘None,’ Sirius agreed gamely. ‘But as Remus and I are mostly for blokes—I mean, for each other,’ he amended over Remus’s irritated ‘ahem’—‘and James has you already, well….’

‘Oh, very nice,’ Peter commented acerbically.

‘Well, Pete, maybe you should listen to Lily. Might get you a girl or two before we leave this place yet.’

‘Peter’s doing just fine, Sirius,’ Remus interrupted with a warning tone. ‘Seriously, Lily, can you improve it? Do you think it would work?’

‘Might do,’ Lily assessed the page, biting her lip in thought. ‘I’ll take it with me, all right? Look it over?’

‘Thanks, Lil. You know if I weren’t gay….’

‘Oh, I know.’ They giggled, but then looked over at the surprised, dreamy expression on James’s face.

‘James? Hello? Earth to James?’ Lily prodded his arm, then waved a hand in front of his eyes.

‘I…I didn’t know you had a thing for Lily, Remus,’ James said solemnly.

‘Er…I don’t, James, thanks, have you met my boyfriend?’ Remus answered. ‘Why are you gone all funny?’

‘Just…thinking. About our list. We…we did say we were going to enlist Lily.’

‘Yeah, as a model. And now an editor, apparently,’ Sirius said.

‘I was thinking about…other things,’ James admitted.

Lily squirmed into James’s lap and kissed him. ‘Such as…’ she prompted.

Peter ignored them, reaching for more trifle.

 

…And that was how they wound up, a few nights later, with Peter out on a date and their revised notices safely up on the bulletin boards of all four common rooms, in the seventh-year dormitory, swapping.

‘Are you sure about this?’ Lily asked Remus as she watched Sirius and James pair off for Sirius’s bed. 

‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ Remus said, but he didn’t sound so sure. Lily was gorgeous, no doubt, and he had fantasized now and then, but she was James’s girl, and, well, a _girl_.

‘Relax,’ Lily smiled at him, leaning in for a kiss. She led him to James’s bed – another fantasy James had only recently confessed – and pressed his shoulders to make him sit on the coverlet. She knelt down and took off his shoes, one at a time, caressing each ankle as she did. Then she worked her way between his legs, her fingers crawling like little spiders up either side of him until they reached his shirt. 

Remus looked over at Sirius’s bed and saw James and Sirius snogging. They looked almost like brothers – but different enough that the analogy was more hot than sick. Sirius had confessed to Remus that he and James had practised their kissing on one another once, when they were alone on a holiday at Hogwarts. Remus could tell why James would want to kiss Sirius, but seeing them now, he understood why Sirius would want to kiss James. Why anyone would want to kiss James. His glasses were askew, now, steaming up, and Sirius lifted them away from his face and laid them on the bedside stand before returning. James looked wanton and fresh at the same time. He—

Remus’s attention abruptly returned to his own situation. Lily had ducked her head and was blowing warm air against his crotch. Her fingers played with his inner thighs, thinner than Sirius’s fingers, but less tentative, more practiced. She rubbed her cheek against the bulge in his trousers, then with a look up to make sure he was watching, she grabbed the zipper pull with her teeth and dragged down. Slowly, slowly, slowly, his fly opened, and once again, she rubbed her face against him before continuing. Remus lay back on his elbows, wanting to give in to the sensation, forget that this was a girl, that this was _Lily_ , but not wishing to relinquish his view of the others…yet.

Lily took advantage of his weight shift to tug on his waistband and pull his trousers part-way down. Free of the twill, his penis made a tent out of his boxers, but she unbuttoned the fly – again with her teeth, gods! – and blew gently on his curly hair. 

Across the room, Sirius and James had removed their shirts. Sirius’s broad shoulders and pecs engulfed James’s weedier torso in an embrace. Did they look like that when they held each other, he and Sirius? Did they fit in each other’s arms that way?

Lily placed her hands on either side of Remus’s hips and pushed herself to her feet. She obstructed the view, just for a moment, before she walked over and interrupted the pair by whispering in James’s ear. James looked up, smiled beautifully, and nodded. Without disentangling himself from Sirius, he reached up as Lily turned her back to him and pulled her zipper down for her. Sirius locked eyes with Remus and they smiled at one another.

‘All right?’ he asked casually.

‘All right,’ Remus told him.

Lily stalked back toward him, every step bringing her dress down over her shoulders, her breasts, her waist, until she snaked her arms out of the sleeves and dropped the skirt to the ground. Remus had a moment to admire the lace bra and matching pants and garters before she crawled between his legs again.

‘Watch them, it’s all right,’ she said, running a nail along the side of his penis. ‘I know you want to see.’

Remus hitched his arms under his hips to hold himself up more comfortably. Lily, meanwhile, familiarized herself with his erection. She dipped her tongue to his tip, tasting experimentally, then licked the head all around, down to the rolled seam of flesh where his circumcision scar formed a ridge between head and shaft. She pulled on the waistband of his shorts and he lifted his hips obligingly, just enjoying the feeling, watching his lover and their best friend tumble against the pillows.

Lily licked his balls and then his shaft, squeezing gently with one hand while she sucked. She ran the edge of her incisors along his veins lightly, teasing the flesh with every stroke of her teeth and tongue. Meanwhile, Remus lost himself in visions of Sirius, his Sirius, taking James’s prick in his hands and pumping in double-time. He saw James reach down to slow Sirius’s strokes, and realized with detached amusement that the rhythm he directed for Sirius matched Lily’s hand.

‘Bit faster, please,’ Remus heard himself saying through dry lips. 

Lily obliged, and he felt himself respond. But then she stopped just when things began to get interesting.

‘Oh, James,’ she called in a sing-song, twisting around to sit in front of Remus’s spread legs, at the foot of the bed. ‘Remus, unhook me, please,’ she requested.

Remus sat up, which had the effect of pressing his prick between his stomach and Lily’s tailbone. It rubbed against the scratchy lace of her garter-belt. Remus was relieved she asked him to fiddle with the bra where he could see it; he had only ever done this twice before, and the second time, he had been a complete bungler about it. Lily’s bra had odd, button-like clasps, but he managed it without, he hoped, ruining her mood. His own was dwindling at the reminder that she was a girl, even if she was a game girl. 

But Lily didn’t seem to mind. She pushed back a bit against him and swung her hips side to side. The crinkly lace pressed into his flesh and his hard-on renewed, despite himself. She leaned forward suddenly, affording him an excellent view of her crack, and when she straightened up, flipping her curtain of hair to one side, she held the bra in her hand.

‘Lean back a bit,’ she whispered, laying her head against Remus’s shoulder to press her lips to his neck. ‘Put your arm around my waist.’

Remus did as he was told, feeling the way his cock slid right along the small of her back, her spine, between her buttocks. He balanced on one arm and held her with the other, while she stretched one of her arms over her head to stroke his hair, and began to touch herself with her free hand.

She cupped her breasts first, one then the other, pinching each nipple to plump pinkness before moving on. James had worked his way around behind Sirius and seemed to be mimicking her movements, using Sirius as his model. Then she slid her hand down the centre of her naval, down one thigh, back up, and ever, ever so slowly, underneath the elastic band of her knickers.

James’s hands followed her movements, and Remus watched him plunge into Sirius’s y-fronts. Remus ground his hips against Lily, unable to help himself at the sight of James and Sirius. James pumped harder, unable to stop himself at the sight of Lily and Remus. Four sets of lungs drew breaths increasingly ragged, four heartbeats raced with anticipation.

Then it happened. Lily nodded at James, and as if the two had planned this moment, they let go of their partners and walked toward one another. They kissed in the middle of the room and then passed each other, Lily joining Sirius on his bed, James coming back to his own.

‘You—’ Remus said.

‘Shh,’ James cut him off with a shake of his head. ‘It’s okay. Share and share alike, Remus.’

TBC….


	5. In which Remus learns something

They agreed, without ever really speaking of it, not to tell Peter. He would be unspeakably hurt if he’d known. They all decided they’d make it up to him, somehow, though they each had different ideas about retribution. 

But after that, a few things changed. Remus no longer felt quite so uncomfortable around girls – well, around Lily. He kept thinking back to the feel of her, silky skin and satin and lace, and the way her hair smelled, and the way her tongue moved over his slit when she licked him. Though nothing he had experienced that night compared to Sirius, of course. Unless it was the way James felt, sitting on him, holding his dick at the right angle to impale himself on it. 

Remus decided he quite liked fucking James. And Lily, for that matter.

Especially when, a few days later, Lily brought him a present.

‘What is it?’

‘Don’t open it here,’ she told him, dumping her books back into her sack. ‘Put it in your bag, before the other prefects wonder why I’m giving you gifts, when I’m engaged to James.’

‘Right.’ But the thought of the slim case distracted him all through the meeting. Even more than Snape’s scowl. Could it be a wand? He didn’t need a new wand. Besides, Ollivander didn’t do Owl Order, and there was no place in Hogsmeade to get a decent wand.

Lily and James left the meeting together, and everyone filed out after them. Remus avoided the eye of Agility Moncreve, the Ravenclaw fifth-year prefect who, it seemed, had crushed on him since her arrival at Hogwarts. He ducked away from the small group and took a shortcut back to Gryffindor Tower.

The box was plain, thin cardboard, with no markings of any kind. It was much too long for a quill, and only Hagrid would need a wand that long. He lifted the top and jiggled it to dislodge the bottom, then flipped the top around and back over to keep it together. Pushing the paper apart, he caught a glimpse of a brown plait. Leather? He lifted it out.

‘It’s a riding crop,’ Lily said behind him. Remus jumped a foot. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to startle you,’ Lily laughed.

‘I…thought you went off with James.’

‘I did, but only to see him off with Peter and Sirius. They’ll keep each other busy; I’ve told them to start sorting through the owls from the ad.’

‘I doubt Peter realised when he asked for your help, you’d soon become our Chief Operating Officer,’ Remus said wryly.

Lily merely cocked her head and shrugged. ‘Behind every amazingly strange business proposition is a woman with a head for management. So, do you like it?’

Remus looked at the crop again. ‘I don’t ride,’ he said, then realised how stupid he was being. He blushed. Lily laughed again.

‘Oh, yes you do,’ she said merrily. ‘Lock the door, just in case.’ 

 

‘Why am I here, and not James?’ Remus asked a few minutes later. He was contemplating Lily’s perfectly rounded bottom, offered to him while she held on to one of the posts of Remus’s bed. 

‘Oh, James doesn’t really like it,’ Lily said breezily. ‘I mean, he’ll try, poor dear, but he’s afraid he’ll hurt me. But I think you’ll do well. Just give it a go.’

Remus thought this had to be the strangest thing he’d ever done. He swished the crop experimentally once or twice, embarrassed that he quite liked the _whooshing_ sound it made as it passed through the air. He flicked it again, and this time aimed for Lily’s arse. The crop grazed her left cheek and she twitched.

‘Again,’ she coaxed. ‘Aim for the soft part.’

Remus tried again. The crop landed more solidly this time. Lily shuddered. ‘That’s it,’ she said with an approving nod.

It was weird, standing there swatting James’s best girl with a leather switch, but Remus got the hang of it. Once he landed a few more satisfying thwacks, once her bottom began to swell and turn red from the welts, once she began to rock against the bedpost and whimper and beg for more, Remus forgot about James. He forgot about Sirius. All that mattered was the task at hand.

Hands. He threw down the crop and stepped behind her, caressing the twin orbs with his palms. She trembled and melted into his cool touch, almost sitting in the cups of his hands. Remus squeezed reflexively, and she moaned.

She reached behind and grabbed his wrist, pulled it forward to place his hand on her crotch and pushed his fingers toward the cleft between her legs. They twisted together and fell on their sides onto the bed, Lily’s hand still massaging his fingers into herself. Remus shifted his other hand toward the crack between her cheeks, seeking more familiar territory. With one hand in front and one behind, he worked her flesh, marveling at the wetness, the way her body gave beneath his touch. It was so different from being with the few girls he’d tried to date, before his first experiences with boys. With Jonas. With Michael. With Sirius. 

Lily was writhing now, spooning up against him with every push of his fingers. A wave of guilt passed over Remus – she probably wanted him to use his tongue, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that. Still, the way she ground her arse, still pink and warm from the whipping, into his groin…that would produce results no matter what gender he preferred, Remus thought.

Remus withdrew his finger from her arsehole, reasoning with what little part of his brain that still worked that she would be less upset at that than if he took his hand away from her clit. He pushed her away just enough to lift his robes up between them, to work his fly and free his cock…but in his concentration, he lost his rhythm inside her. Lily’s thrashing subsided into an occasional ‘Oh’ of pleasure when he remembered to pulse against her. 

‘Sorry,’ he muttered into her hair. Oh, sweet-smelling hair. How did she make it smell like sandalwood and summer rain?

‘No,’ Lily said, clearly disappointed. She twisted out of his grip, turning to face him. ‘No, it’s okay. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t push you,’ she said. ‘It’s just…I’ve always liked you, Remus. A lot. I know you’d never do anything because of James, and I know, you love Sirius. I love James. I do. But…damn. I’m so sorry you’re gay.’

‘Apparently not _too_ gay,’ Remus growled, and rolled on top of her. ‘Let’s just see what happens, okay?’

TBC….


	6. In which business booms, and Remus reads a letter

Sirius, Peter, and James staked out their usual corner of the common room, where they could spread out and make some sense out of the owl-posts they had received. James was astounded by the response so far. He had expected a handful at most; when Peter returned from the tunnel that afternoon, his briefcase was half full of letters. 

‘This one wants her toes licked,’ Peter reported, nose crinkling in disgust. 

‘Yeah, I’ve got one who likes…ew. James, is that physically possible?’ Sirius held the parchment under the Head Boy’s nose.

‘I think so,’ James said, straightening his glasses. ‘You’d have to be pretty flexible, though.’

‘I never knew so many students were so warped.’ Sirius shook his head. ‘You’d think Remus and I were downright normal.’

‘You are,’ Peter said with an eye-roll. ‘Practically an old married couple, you two. What’s keeping him, anyway?’

‘He and Lily needed to talk about something,’ James volunteered, his voice a bit thicker than usual. ‘They should be along in time for supper.’

‘Peter, there’s a real future in this dating service thing,’ Sirius continued, smirking at James’s delicate way of putting it. He gestured to the strewn envelopes and pages. ‘I mean, seriously, there’s got to be a bird for you in here, somewhere. But beyond that… think what we could do if we, well….’

‘Set ourselves up as an escort service?’ James interrupted. ‘Hello? Aren’t you the one who just a minute ago said you’re practically married?’

‘No, I said that,’ Peter said, ‘and _you’re_ the closest thing to a married man around here.’

‘Right, well, I really don’t think—’ James stopped abruptly, staring down at the paper in his hands.

‘What?’ both Sirius and Peter asked.

‘This one’s about…me.’

The other two snorted at one another and shook their heads. ‘Figures,’ Peter muttered.

‘No, I mean it, look,’ James insisted, and he handed Peter the letter.

‘Well, I’d never let you do that to me, in the prefect’s bathroom or on the back of a broom,’ Peter answered as he passed it to Sirius. ‘But then, you’re not my type.’

Sirius finished reading and handed it back to James. ‘Don’t let Lily see that,’ he warned. ‘Anyway, wasn’t the point of this exercise so that we could research all this stuff? We can’t possibly know about it sufficiently if all we’ve done is read other fantasies, right?’

‘I think we might have a problem,’ Peter said, leafing through the pages and gathering them in a growing pile.

‘Why?’ Sirius asked.

‘Well, that one was for James,’ Peter answered, taking the letter from James and adding it to another couple pages. ‘So are these.’ He pointed to another small pile. ‘These are the ones that mention him, Sirius or Lily. And these are all non-specific or people we don’t care about,’ he said, pointing to a slightly larger stack. ‘But these,’ and he plunked down the stack in his hand, which was easily twice as tall as the third group, ‘are all about Remus.’

 

They told him in the dormitory after dinner. James had said that he didn’t want his meal ruined by Remus’s head swelling right in front of their eyes. Sirius had punched James in the shoulder, hard, and reminded him that they were talking about Remus, not James. Peter sagely predicted that Remus would not be amused.

All things considered, Remus took the news that he was hands-down the school hottie rather in stride. He looked at them all in disbelief, including Lily, who had not stopped smiling since they reappeared just before all going to the Great Hall, and who now simply nodded as if to say, ‘Of course, he is.’ Then, with a final pleading look at Sirius, he ran to the nearest bathroom and threw up.

When he came back from the bathroom, sipping a glass of water, the other four were arguing about how to use the information in the letters – and the money. He hovered outside the door to listen.

‘I still say we should make some effort to give them what they ask for,’ James was saying. ‘After all, we took their money. We should live up to our ad.’

‘James,’ Lily commented sagely, ‘how many letters featured your name?’

‘That’s not the point,’ said James, puffing himself up a bit.

‘Look, I’m not having Remus whoring himself out to half the school,’ Sirius said angrily, and Remus smiled. ‘I know he’s the most desirable bloke there ever was – and he’s mine, so they can all piss in the wind.’

‘Fair enough,’ James answered. ‘But don’t you think that’s rather up to Remus and you, not just you?’

‘Besides,’ Remus heard Peter’s calm interjection, ‘most of the letters for Remus are from girls, so…they’d be wanting their money back, wouldn’t they?’

‘I’m not as bad as all that,’ Remus said as he entered the room. ‘Let’s see the letters,’ he sighed, sitting on the bed beside Sirius. Sirius put a protective arm around his shoulders. ‘Gerroff, Sirius, I’m fine.’

Sirius removed his hand but didn’t hand over the letters. ‘I was just saying that I don’t want you—’

‘I know,’ Remus told him softly. ‘It’s okay. I just want to have a look. All right?’

Sirius looked into his eyes for a moment, but then something like shame filled his face. He ducked his head sheepishly. ‘Yeah, all right.’

Remus patted his lover’s knee and reached out his other hand. Sirius relinquished the bundle of papers. Remus flipped through them while the others watched.

‘Jill Abbott, Yolanda Beamish, Beatrice Branstone, Greta Catchlove, Glenda Chittock, Elfrida Croaker – is she dreaming? – Marisa Edgecombe, Sarah Fawcett, Benjy Fenwick – ! – Josephine Frobisher, Alicia Gudgeon…there must about a hundred here.’ He shuffled through the packet. ‘Holy…have you _read_ these yet?’

‘Some of them,’ Peter admitted, blushing. ‘Read Samantha Montgomery’s. Katherine O’Malley’s isn’t bad, either.’

James leered. ‘Tell us a story, Uncle Remus,’ he pleaded, batting his eyes and getting comfortable against the headboard of his bed, pulling Lily against his chest.

Sirius growled at James, but settled back on his pillows and let Remus deal with it. To his surprise, Remus fished out Samantha Montgomery’s letter and began to read:

_Dear Magical Matchmakers,_

_It would take powerful magic to match me with the man I want most in the world: Remus Lupin. He’s a seventh year in Gryffindor at Hogwarts, and he’s just so dreamy! I think he’s a little bit, well, you know, light in the loafers, as my Aunt Elizabeth used to say, but if I could be with anyone in the world, it would be him._

_You asked about our fantasies, and this is mine. I suppose I can write this all down safely enough; after all, confidentiality is guaranteed, right?_

_Remus would take me into Hogsmeade for tea at Madam Puddifoot’s_ (‘I hate that place,’ Remus interjected), _and we would sit and have our biscuits and just read each other’s thoughts without saying a word. Then, he’d walk with me, hand in hand, to the Meadow Inn, over on Fleet Street, and we’d check in to the room he’d reserved. Once inside, we’d cast silencing charms all around the room, for privacy, and Remus would hang out the ‘Do not Disturb’ sign on the door._

_Then he’d turn around, and I’d see that look in his eyes. Not many people probably notice it, but Remus can get a feral sort of hunger shining in those hazel orbs, and when I see him like that – it’s usually when he’s watching his mates play for Gryffindor – then I just want him to rip off my clothes and press into my body. But he won’t. He’ll just look at me, all animal and yet so controlled, and he’ll say, ‘Come here.’_

_I’ll rush to meet his demand, and when I arrive in his arms, he’ll push me away, down to kneel at his feet. He’ll say, ‘You’re an eager thing,’ and I’ll say, ‘Yes, yes I am.’ He’ll lean down to smooth my hair and lift my chin up to look at him. Then he’ll say, ‘I wonder if you know how to suck cock.’ And I’ll rise to my knees and lift his robes, and underneath, he’ll be hard and waiting for me._

Remus stopped reading, looking round at the others. James and Lily were snuggling on James’s bed. Lily’s eyes were closed and James had his face buried in her hair. Peter’s eyes were bright and he nodded encouragingly. ‘It gets better,’ he said. ‘Go on – you never knew Samantha had this in her, really.’ Remus turned his head to look at Sirius. Sirius also had his eyes closed, one arm behind his head against the pillows; the other hand rested idly on his hip. His thumb absently stroked back and forth over his jeans front. ‘Keep reading,’ Peter insisted. Remus sighed, but cleared his throat and continued.

_I’ll seduce him with my tongue, right up against the door of the room. I’ll breathe in his scent, an aroma of dark chocolate and bitter woodsmoke, and nuzzle his balls before I take them gently in my mouth. He’ll shuck his robe above me and my hands will wander up over his torso, seeking out the nipples that I know grow hard with longing for me. He’ll put one hand on my hair as I lick all around him, wetting him down and blowing warm gusts to ruffle his short, thick hair. His hand on my head is soothing, as if I am his pet cat and he is stroking my fur. I’ll purr into his groin, taking his length into my throat with practised ease. He’ll moan under my touch. I’ll suck and suck, hungry for the hot spurt to burn my mouth and all the way down, a vintage finer than any wine. But before I can bring him to release, he’ll gently draw my head back and reluctantly I’ll let him escape the warm wetness of my mouth._

_‘Go to the bed and take off your robes,’ he’ll tell me. It’s an order, but I can tell that he wants me as much as I want him. I have no wish to displease my master. I’ll retreat, stripping wantonly before him, eyes locked on his face. While I slowly unclasp my robe front and push the silky cloth from my shoulders, revealing the white mounds of my breasts, Remus will reach into a bag we have brought with us. He’ll take out several instruments for our night’s pleasure._

Remus stopped again. ‘I think this girl has read too many _Bewitchery_ romances,’ he announced. They all exhorted him to just keep reading. Before he ducked his head back to the letter, he noted the redness of Lily’s lips. She and James had been kissing. And Peter was now lying back on his bed, and Sirius…Sirius had now put his hand inside his trousers. Remus felt an answering shudder in the area of his own lap, and he pressed on, resolving to look up a bit more often.

_By the time I am bared before him, wearing only my heels, stockings, and garters, Remus has shown me a length of Silkworm’s finest binding ropes, a pair of nipple clamps with a chain that fastens to a collar, a set of manacles lined in fur, and a bottle of McGill’s Magical Massage Oil. He tells me to stand between the posts of the bed, and I comply, languidly lifting my arms to either side. Remus stands before me, his chest glistening, his prick bobbing slightly as he moves. He places a manacle on my left wrist, locks it in place, and runs the Silkworm rope through the link. Then he repeats the process on my right wrist. As he reaches forward, my breasts brush across his chest; his cock presses my thigh all too briefly. He smiles again, that feral smile, and I can feel the heat and wetness between my legs already. Once the rope is looped through, he climbs onto the bed to tie it off, tugging so that my arms are stretched tight. I rock back on my heels from the pressure, forcing my knees straight so that I do not buckle against the bed. Next, I see the black cloth of the blindfold descend from above my head, and he presses it across my eyes until the world is black night, though the room is still warm and candlelit around me. Suddenly the movement of air across my skin is colder, the faint noise of Remus sliding off the bed is louder. I feel him place a warm finger on my hand as he walks past me. He trails it all the way up the inside of my arm, letting the short nail drag against my skin, across the tops of my breasts, around my nipples, underneath the fleshy mounds, and then up to my right shoulder and down to the wrist. He breaks contact then, but I can hear him moving around the room, blowing out a few of the candles, his breath even and quiet in the dark._

_I feel his exhalation against my face and know that he is standing in front of me again. He grabs my cunt, fingers probing between the labia, searching for my clit. I gasp and my knees bend, but the ropes hold me in place. He pushes me back up, pressing my pelvic bone, and finds the spot where friction is divine. I feel the heat emanate off him first, then his flesh presses my leg again, followed by the pressure of his chest against mine. A hand spreads between my shoulder blades. I tip my head up and am met with a kiss._

_The kiss deepens, his fingers reach further inside me, and I moan into his mouth. Contact stops. I am abandoned. ‘No noise,’ he says, his voice hoarse and gruff from lack of use. He moves away again. I am suspended in space and time, the air now cooling my lustful crotch._

_He is behind me, on the bed. I feel it shift behind my knees, hear the springs creak softly under his weight. I want that weight to crush me instead. Then cold metal under rubber pinches my nipple. I stifle a cry of surprise just in time. The sensation is twinned; both breasts are locked in the harsh, twisting embrace of the clamps. I feel the collar against my neck and he lifts my hair with a rush of cold air on my back. He tightens the strap. Next he adjusts the lead and I feel the clamps tug up, the leash that runs between them and my neck is taut and snaps flat over my breastbone._

_Then he touches my back, and his hands are slick with oil. I drop my head forward to present him my back, feeling a relief to the upward pull of the clamps, but my chin is supported on the collar and I cannot roll forward because of the ropes holding my arms in place. His strong fingers massage the lotion into my skin, each manipulation of my flesh pulling my breasts within the clamps deliciously. The oil grows warm with every swipe, and soon I am burning and slippery, ready for him to grind and slide against me._

_From behind, I feel his manhood push its way between my legs. I shift, spreading them apart for him. He reaches inside me again, testing how wet I am, how much I ache for him. Every movement stretches the tautness between my collar and my imprisoned nipples. Every straining muscle twitch from my arms, strung between the bedposts, causes ripples of sensation to pass through me. Remus kisses the back of my neck and I lean into his touch. I throw back my head to rest on his shoulder; the clamps tighten once more. He steadies himself beneath me and I open for him. Every thrust pushes me up against my bonds, sending jolts through my arms and chest and pelvis…. Every scrape of body against body produces more heat mixed with sweat and sweet oils. He pounds into my hole and presses me against my restraints until we both climax, breaking our vow of silence…._

 

Remus trailed off as the letter went on to plead with the Magical Matchmakers; they had no idea how long she had dreamed of that moment, and if there was any way they could intercede, for she was certain Remus J. Lupin did not even know she existed….

Looking around the room, he felt cheated. He, the subject of the interlude, had been forced to read aloud, while the others had all been free to go to a private fantasy-land of their own. Even Peter was obliviously busy. But then Sirius saw that he had dropped the parchment, and he pinned him to the mattress.

‘Right, well, Samantha Montgomery will never get her wish,’ Sirius said as he attacked Remus with fervor, ‘but I’m sure as hell going to see about owl-ordering some nipple clamps!’

TBC….


	7. In which Remus makes a discovery, and a date?

Remus had a problem.

Thanks to the dozens of letters they had received in which he figured prominently, he could scarcely walk through the corridors without seeing someone whom he knew fantasized about him, often quite vividly. 

Every class he attended held at least one young woman or man who had named him a lover of choice. He jumped when anyone spoke to him; blushed and stammered when he had to reply. His class participation was down, he knew, and his concentration suffered as well. If he weren’t careful, his marks would drop soon.

Meanwhile, James, Sirius, Lily, and Peter debated continually over whether they should honour the requests expressed in their responses. While they all agreed with Sirius, who forcefully insisted that Remus would not become the school whore just for a research project spun out of control, James felt a certain obligation to the students who thought they were enrolling in a dating service.

Peter and Lily decided that perhaps the best course was to glean what they could from the letters in terms of research, and then try to match people up based on interests, in the cases of people who named one of them.

Still, Remus could not control his embarrassment. He was also a little miffed at Sirius for assuming that they shouldn’t play the field a little more. His experiences with Lily had taught him that there were some pleasures he wasn’t yet ready to give up on for “married” life. Moreover, despite what Sirius claimed, Remus was fairly certain that Sirius had not really meant that _he_ wanted to be exclusive; merely that he didn’t want _Remus_ sleeping with half the school. Remus agreed on that point: there were a number of people whose letters had been disturbing, to say the least. But certain others….

‘Oi, Remus!’

Like Gideon Prewett, for example.

‘Hullo, Gideon,’ Remus smiled weakly.

‘Fabian and me were wondering if you’d be willing to coach us on Astronomy sometime this week. OWLs, you know,’ he grimaced. ‘Would a week and Thursday be all right? Only, we’re pretty sure Professor Sinistra’s planning a few quizzes in the next couple weeks, before the finals at end of term.’

‘Oh,’ Remus answered, looking for a means of escape. Gideon’s fantasy had begun in the Astronomy Tower, though his twin had been absent in his letter. ‘I, um, well, that is to say…sure, I’d be happy to help,’ Remus gave in with a sigh. Why did he always have to be such a pushover? Why couldn’t he ever be rude, like James or Sirius?

‘Great!’ Gideon beamed at him. ‘Peter says you always got top marks in Astronomy, and we’ve got a lot to cover. See you next Thursday, then?’

‘Cheers,’ Remus answered, relieved to see Gideon shift his book-bag and move on down the corridor. 

But then Gideon stopped and turned round. ‘Oh and, er, if it’s all right with you, don’t tell Lucinda? She’s been nagging after me to ask her for help for ages.’

‘No problem,’ Remus said, truly confused. He watched Gideon turn again, his hips not exactly swaying on his slender, waif-like frame. He and Fabian were twins, but by no means were they identical. Gideon was smaller in almost every way, more sensitive, more fragile, almost. But his light build made him an excellent Seeker and his attractive grey eyes fluttered behind lids with the longest lashes Remus had ever seen on a boy. Shaking his head free of the image, Remus headed to his next class. 

 

‘Remus, come look at this catalogue,’ Sirius beckoned when he arrived in the common room that evening.

Remus came over, blushed profusely, and said, ‘Put that away, Sirius, do you want us to get caught?’

‘By whom, Moony? You’re a prefect; James and Lily are Head Boy and Girl. Who’s going to confiscate it?’

‘All right, but don’t wave it round, then. Other people will see it,’ he pleaded to Sirius’s albeit tiny sense of reason.

‘Steady on,’ Sirius laughed. ‘I’m not that daft. But check this out!’ He flipped to a particular page and what Remus saw there made him more than blush…it made him hard.

The page showed an assortment of leather clothing, including corsets, collars, hoods with zippers in strategic places, and… ‘How the hell does anyone wear that?’ Remus breathed, looking at an intricate web of straps.

‘There’s a model, see?’ Sirius held up the facing page. A woman hung suspended in the straps, wearing one of the zippered hoods. Remus gaped at the photograph. 

‘It’s a Muggle catalogue,’ Sirius went on, as if that made its appeal even more illicit. ‘But look what’s in the back.’ He flipped the pages again and showed Remus three whole pages of books, recordings, and short films. ‘I haven’t any idea how a projector would work here, though,’ Sirius said with a sigh. ‘I never even imagined…. This idea of Peter’s is turning out to be the best!’

Remus licked his lips. ‘Upstairs, you,’ he whispered into Sirius’s ear, breath heaving. ‘Now.’ He yanked the catalogue away and stuffed it in his bag for safekeeping.

They raced up the staircase to their dormitory room, and after a cursory check to make sure they were alone, Remus dropped his bags and wrestled Sirius to the closest bed. In mere moments, he had Sirius’s robes open, one knee grinding against Sirius’s already bulging crotch.

‘Mmff,’ Sirius said, but whatever he meant was lost as Remus thrust his tongue inside Sirius’s mouth.

‘Where did you get that naughty little catalogue, then, Sirius?’ Remus asked him as he tugged Sirius’s t-shirt out from his trousers.

‘Came…mmff…complimmmfftery…with our ordermmmfff,’ Sirius answered. ‘The mmmfff… and the—oh!’ His explanation turned into a moan of pleasure. Remus had lowered his pelvis against Sirius’s groin, rubbing their erections against one another.

‘Tsk, tsk, tsk, Mr Black,’ Remus clicked his tongue and shook his head, catching Sirius’s wrists in his grip. ‘You know better than to import contraband onto school property. I’m afraid I’ll have to…punish you.’

Sirius’s eyes grew brighter. ‘Punish me?’ he asked with a broadening smile. ‘Ooh, this is new. Go on, then. What’s my punishment?’

Remus paused, thinking. ‘Well, first,’ he said, licking Sirius’s ear to buy himself a little time, ‘I think you’ll be confined to quarters for the rest of the night.’

‘Sounds delightful,’ Sirius answered. He hooked his knees around Remus’s hips, pulling their groins together harder. ‘What else?’

Remus rolled out of the circle of Sirius’s legs easily. ‘Well, I think you’re a significant flight risk, so strip. No clothes, no cloak: no leaving the tower.’

‘As you wish,’ Sirius grinned in reply, and he rolled off the bed. He finished pulling his shirt-tails out of his trousers, inching them up first one side of his torso, then the other. Remus leaned sat on the edge of the bed with the feeling that this show might take a while. Sirius tugged on the back of his shirt and turned away just as he lifted it over his head, showing Remus his back. The t-shirt was still bunched on his upper arms and across his chest. He turned clockwise slowly, dragging the folds of fabric down one muscular arm, keeping the shirt clutched across his chest and the other arm to conceal his flesh from view. By the time he faced Remus again, his right arm was bare. He swiped his chest with the loose half of the shirt, rubbing himself all over before plucking at the sleeve to pull it off, then tossed it at Remus teasingly.

Next, he turned to the bed behind him and lifted one leg to the covers, showing just a bit of bare ankle as he untied his shoe with two fingers. He cupped the heel of the shoe and pulled it off, then rolled down his sock, for all the world as if it were a silk stocking. Remus laughed, but stopped abruptly when Sirius glared at him. The devil played in Sirius’s eyes, and he pulled the sock taut before releasing it at Remus. The springy projectile narrowly missed hitting him in the eye. Sirius toed off the other shoe and kicked it at Remus’s stomach.

‘Hey!’ Remus said as he caught the shoe reflexively. ‘Are you bucking for more punishment, here, or what?’

Sirius just cocked an eyebrow at him and shrugged. ‘What are you going to make me do, suck you off?’

Remus chuckled. ‘You wish. I have plans for your insolence, you know. Now continue before I think of something really horrible to do with you.’

Sirius pulled off his other sock in a hurry, but then seemed to remember he was trying to be seductive. He ran his hands over his chest again and down his ribs until his fingers came to rest on his belt. He snaked the end out of the loop, pulled back to release the buckle tab, and slid the buckle off the flat end. Then he pulled on the buckle evenly, drawing it out of his belt loops, wrapping it around himself as he unwound it from his waist. When it came free, he snapped the two ends together, cracked them a couple times, and flipped the end toward Remus. Remus caught it and began to reel Sirius in. It only took two steps, but Sirius yanked the belt away when he was an inch from Remus’s face. He suspended the flat end of the belt over Remus’s lap, then slowly lowered it, coiling the leather like a snake across Remus’s legs. Remus’s erection bobbed inside his robes, disturbing the perfect spiral of the belt.

Then Sirius’s hands wandered once more to his waistband. He swiveled his hips forward and back, round in circles, as he fingered the button on his trouser-front. He ran his fingers down the smooth fly and back up, then unbuttoned the top of his trousers. Then he sank to his knees on the bed, straddling Remus but not lowering his weight. He picked up Remus’s hand, set it to his zipper pull, and guided him to unlock the teeth of the zipper, allowing the bulge underneath to poke out and just barely scrape Remus’s chest. A small wet spot formed where Sirius’s shorts were stretching most.

Sirius put Remus’s hands back down at his sides and slid off the bed. He opened one side of the front flap, then the other, then turned again and eased the trousers around his rump, letting them fall to the floor. He stepped out and away from Remus, kicking the garment across the floor and out of the way. Then he rolled his shorts waistband down once, twice, and whisked off his y-fronts quickly, spreading his legs immediately so Remus got a good view of his arse. With one hand on the floor, he bent his knees a few times and peeked at Remus around each leg, flirting outrageously.

He rose, rolling his spine vertical, and covered his groin with hands like fig leaves, turned, and then presented himself with a broad ‘Ta-da!’

‘Idiot,’ Remus said, breathing hard. ‘Now get over here and on your back, so I can fuck you through the mattress.’

Sirius pounced onto the bed, splaying himself eagerly with his hands behind his head and his legs spread wide. Remus smirked at him and, although he was aching to make good on his threat, he decided to torture Sirius just a bit more first. 

‘Good. Now stay put, and I’ll be back soon.’

Sirius’s eyes widened. ‘But you said….’

‘And I will, my sick little puppy. But not quite yet. Don’t move, now,’ he wagged a finger at Sirius warningly. Just before he reached the door, he turned back, a malicious smile crossing his face, ‘Oh, and while you’re there, do think about what you’ve done to deserve this.’ He made quickly for the bathroom, reassured by the ripples of Sirius’s laughter behind him.

Remus thought of Sirius lying supine on the bed, his prick sticking straight up, his knees practically hanging over the bedframe, slowly getting gooseflesh while waiting for his lover, as he locked himself in a cubicle to relieve his immediate need. But even as the image floated before him, it transmuted by small increments. Remus couldn’t help imagining light brown hair instead of black, a slighter frame with shorter legs, a face with a longer chin and an upturned nose, eyes as grey as Gideon’s, and a vision of intricate straps encasing a fifth year’s body….

Yes, he decided. He and Sirius would come to an agreement about a little extra-curricular activity.

TBC….


	8. In which Peter makes a confession

When Remus returned, Sirius looked up in anticipation. He was still splayed out on the bed, his erection jumping with every breath.

‘Remus, I can’t stay like this much longer,’ he begged immediately. ‘I’ll be good, I promise, only….’

‘Okay,’ Remus shushed him, closing the dormitory door and crawling onto the foot of the bed. He pulled the curtains closed, too, just in case. He was glad he had wanked off moments before – he was already getting hard again at the sight of the real Sirius. But he needed to hold off just a bit longer, until he got what he really wanted. ‘I’ll get to you soon enough, I swear. Only there’s something I wanted to talk about first.’

Sirius’s eyes widened in pain. ‘You want to talk? _Now?_ Moony, I think you’re taking this punishment deal too far.’

‘I mean it,’ Remus frowned at him. ‘I want your full and undivided attention, Sirius, and this is the only time I ever get it.’ He closed his eyes, ashamed at his own harshness. ‘That…came out wrong.’

‘I promise I’ll hang on your every word, Remus,’ Sirius answered, trailing one foot up Remus’s side, ‘but please, let’s just do it, okay?’

Remus looked down at Sirius’s red, swollen cock. He leaned over, stopping with his mouth centimeters away from the tip. ‘You mean,’ he said, his breath creating enough breeze for Sirius’s prick to sway a bit, ‘that if I take care of this,’ he licked the slit with the very tip of his tongue, ‘you’ll listen to me afterward?’

‘Gods, yes!’ Sirius shouted, but it was too late. He plunged his hands over his own balls, and Remus barely had time to open his mouth over the head before Sirius was shooting madly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Remus said a few minutes later. ‘That was unfair of me. I’ll do better in a few minutes, okay?

Sirius, now on his side and considerably calmer, nodded weakly. ‘What’s so important?’

‘I wanted to talk to you about some of those letters.’

Sirius scowled. ‘You don’t have to worry about any of them, Remus. They’re just not as lucky as I am.’

‘No, they’re not. But…I think, I’d like for some of them to get a shot at it.’

Sirius sat up against the headboard. He seemed very still – not in the sense that he was motionless, but that he had somehow shut down inside. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked after a couple minutes.

‘I love you, Sirius. You know that?’ Remus waited for his answering nod to continue. ‘I’m not going to forget that, or lose sight of it. But…well, when we switched with Lily and James, that was….’

‘Amazing…Yeah,’ Sirius agreed.

‘And you know about Lily, right?’

‘Yeah, James told me. I’m kinda glad about that,’ he admitted. ‘Makes me feel less a heel for thinking she’s hot.’

‘Good,’ Remus smiled and put a hand on Sirius’s stomach. ‘Because I really liked being with her. And James, for that matter.’

‘Course you did; he’s James. I’m fine with all that, Remus. Wouldn’t mind if it happened again.’

‘Okay,’ Remus said encouragingly and encouraged. ‘Well, then. I know you liked some of the letters that were written about you, right? Elizabeth Stevens? Frank Longbottom?’

Sirius squirmed a bit. He reached for his robes. ‘I’m cold,’ he explained unnecessarily. ‘Uh…yeah, I guess. Lizzie’s letter was about as hot as Samantha’s.’

‘So, am I right in thinking you wouldn’t mind if I gave you permission to…chat her up?’

Sirius chewed on that a while. He drew his knees to his chest. ‘I guess not.’

Remus nodded. ‘You’d like that, I think, wouldn’t you?’ he pressed.

‘Yeah. I would,’ Sirius admitted. But then he looked up sharply. ‘But it doesn’t mean I don’t love you!’

‘I know, puppy,’ Remus laughed gently. ‘Well, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you, if I want to chat up Kingsley or Keischa Shacklebolt…or Gideon Prewett.’ There. He’d finally got round to it.

‘I…you…but I thought you hated all those letters about you,’ Sirius protested lamely.

‘Not all of them,’ Remus told him with a shrug. ‘Tell you what. Let’s shag mercilessly for a bit. Then let’s look over the letters and each pick out the ones we’d like to pursue. Show them to each other. If you pick a letter and I really don’t want you to be with that person, I’ll veto. You can do the same for me, but we each get to pick out at least three for starters. See how it goes. Deal?’

Sirius scratched his nose. ‘Ask me again after the merciless shagging part?’

 

The appeal to Sirius’s ego worked eventually. They agreed to pick out their top five choices, with the power to veto up to two apiece. Sirius picked out Frank Longbottom (whom Remus knew had been a frequent subject of talk among the Quidditch-crazy), Marina Pendleton, and Tanya Bennett (who had a particularly filthy scenario in her letter, including – Remus shuddered – a golden shower). For himself, there was no doubt in his mind about Gideon Prewett. He had been torn between Kingsley Shacklebolt and Adrian Montague, but Sirius used a veto on Adrian. So Kingsley was his second choice. And to Sirius’s surprise, Katherine O’Malley would be the third on his list.

Meanwhile, their preparation of the calendar itself was progressing, if not easily, at least steadily. Peter had sent home for his brother’s camera and they began setting up some poses in their dormitory at night, using Lily and Sirius (usually either wearing masks or with their faces turned away for anonymity) as models. 

‘Got the supplies, James?’ Peter asked as the door opened on its own. A few seconds later, James pulled off the invisibility cloak and whisked off the cover of a large tray of pastries from the kitchen.

‘Perfect,’ Peter said, salivating at the sight. ‘Now…I think Sirius should take a cruller and…er, well. Use it like a cock ring, Sirius.’

‘Nice, Peter,’ Remus nodded. ‘Got any cream puffs?’ he asked James.

‘But of course!’ James answered in a phony French accent. ‘Lily, how about some pastries for pasties?’

Remus picked up two fat puffs and carefully pulled apart one at its layered midsection. He placed it artfully on Lily’s firm nipple. She laughed and the pastry fell to the ground.

‘Hold still,’ Remus laughed back at her.

‘Sorry, this is just silly,’ Lily said. He repeated the process, this time using a sticking charm. Then he added the second one with another charm.

‘She needs chocolate,’ Peter assessed, squirming a tiny bit despite his calm voice. ‘Oh, and Sirius should have some clotted cream right….’ He drew an outline in the air to demonstrate.

‘Right,’ Remus agreed, taking an éclair off the tray. ‘James, would you like to do the honours?’ he asked, holding out the éclair and waving at Lily’s pubic hair. As James went to work, Remus picked up the bowl of clotted cream and the spoon, and he proceeded to draw a smiley face on Sirius’s chest and abdomen.

James stood up after applying the éclair to Lily’s bush. Like the cream puffs, he had pulled the top half off, smearing the custard filling into her pubes delicately. The chocolate frosting on the top of the éclair was perfectly vertical, approximating the hair it covered.

‘What do you think?’ he asked as he backed up to judge their handiwork.

‘Almost,’ Peter said. ‘Did you get—oh, good,’ he said, seeing he small bowl on the tray. ‘Remus, the cream?’ Peter accepted the spoon and with a polite, ‘Excuse me, Lil,’ he dolloped into her naval, then anchored a bright red maraschino cherry into the white foam.

‘Perfect,’ the other two agreed. Peter took off the lens cap and went to work.

Half a roll of film later, Sirius and Lily were divested of their food items. They shrugged into bathrobes and both declared loudly that showers were definitely on. James trotted behind with an offer to help scrub Lily’s back and Remus, after the display he had just seen them play act, felt like he could do Sirius the same favour, but Peter said, ‘Remus, can you help me clear this all away?’

‘Right,’ Remus said with a sigh, cursing once more the sense of honourbound duty his parents had instilled in him. ‘We really made quite a mess, didn’t we?’

The room was quite disheveled. They had closed all the bed curtains and turned both Peter’s and James’s beds sideways to form a backdrop. In the course of posing, Sirius and Lily had each tracked quite a bit of cream, custard, and chocolate syrup onto the rugs and into the curtains. 

‘I don’t think a simple cleaning charm’s going to do it,’ Remus continued. ‘Hm. _Spicinspanificus!’_

‘Remus,’ Peter said as he put away the camera tripod, extra lenses, and flash cubes, and other paraphernalia, ‘there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about….’

‘Sure, Peter,’ Remus said with a distracted nod. How had they managed to get chocolate on the windowsill? He cast the spell again and it seemed to work this time.

‘I…well…I think maybe…yes. Sit down. Please?’

Remus sat, aware of the nervousness in Peter’s voice. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, concerned.

‘I think I might be…in love. With. Someone.’

‘Oh.’ Remus nodded again. ‘And?’

Peter picked over the tray of pastries, selecting a rather large éclair. ‘It’s someone who would never suspect it.’

‘And you’re worried about telling her?’ Remus concluded. ‘It’s not Lily, is it?’ he asked confidentially.

‘No. Well, yes, I mean…who isn’t in love with Lily? But no, it’s not Lil.’ Peter looked at Remus. ‘It’s not a girl at all, frankly.’

Remus raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh. I see.’

‘Do you?’ Peter asked eagerly.

‘Well, yes, of course. I understand.’

‘Good,’ said Peter with relief. ‘Then let me show you something?’

Remus shrugged and nodded amiably, figuring that Peter had a poem or a letter or even a token he wanted to give to the object of his admiration, whoever that was. But instead, Peter held up the éclair over his mouth, tipped his head up to it, and snaked his tongue into the crevasse where the custard filling lurked. 

He held the éclair carefully, barely putting pressure on the edges, while his tongue lapped into the hole and back out, bringing tiny flecks of custard with it each time. Pink, pointed flesh probed and gently tore the rim of pastry a bit wider, and once he had a purchase well in place, he closed his lips over the end of the éclair. His throat muscles began to work and Remus realized with a mixture of fascination and curiosity that Peter was sucking the crème out of the center. Peter came up for air and with a piercing look at the effects on Remus, used his talented tongue to lick a tiny line away from the chocolate frosting. He dropped to his knees in front of Remus and without looking away, he tilted his head backward, opened his mouth wide, and inserted the éclair as far back as he could. Again, his mouth closed over the éclair, again he held it so gently in lips and fingertips that the soft dough would not tear. Again he drove his tongue forward, sucking out the deepest recesses of the hollow pastry. He began to run his finger down the top of the éclair, through the rivulets of chocolate, until his fingers were covered in the sticky frosting. Still the pastry itself remained intact. He lifted it out of his mouth, wet and slick, and nibbled the soggy end with tiny bites. Then that tongue that moments before seemed pointed came out wide and flat, and he swiped it along the remains of the chocolate surface, cleaning it in broad, full strokes. 

Once the pastry was emptied and cleaned, he held it up to show Remus, whose eyes were wide and whose breathing had quickened. Remus felt his hands going to his groin, despite the incongruity of the sight. And then Peter began to work on his fingers.

He held up one sticky paw, richly coloured from the chocolate, and sucked on the index finger ecstatically. ‘I’ve been working on my technique,’ he confessed at last. ‘I know I’m not much to look at,’ he said, pausing to suck on his pinky finger, ‘but I think you’ll find I’m…capable.’ He demonstrated on his ring finger. Chocolate smeared his cheeks. ‘Let me show you?’ he repeated, holding up his hand with its long middle finger still covered in frosting.

Remus shuddered, groaned, and closed his eyes even while his mouth opened to allow the sound to escape. Peter stood up on his knees and tenderly prodded his middle finger into Remus’s mouth. Remus closed his lips around the protrusion, scraping lightly with his teeth, and vaguely he felt Peter’s other hand reaching under his robes. He felt a moment’s hesitation, one second in which he could have stopped what was about to happen, but the creamy chocolate stuck to his tongue and the roof of his mouth, and words failed him.

Peter’s tongue was as accomplished as he promised. Remus tried not to think how many éclairs had been desiccated for the sake of Peter’s tutelage.

TBC….


	9. In which a fantasy is fulfilled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And therefore look you, call me Ganymede"

Peter and Remus talked until Sirius returned from the showers. Peter admitted that he harboured similar feelings for Sirius, as well, but that he had been certain of a brush-off from the other boy, whereas he thought with Remus at least he’d stand half a chance of proving himself. Remus promised to intercede, if for no other reason than to ease the news of their tryst.

Remus emphasized Peter’s newfound skills when he told Sirius after Peter went down to the common room for a few hours. Though he never thought he’d be attracted to their friend, Peter’s eagerness to please soon convinced Sirius that their convivial friendship could be transferred to something more, at least on occasion. Peter seemed instinctively to know when to pull back from them and leave them time to themselves, but Remus resolved to make sure Peter was included often from then on. Privately, he wondered what would happen when they told James and Lily about Peter, or Peter about the two of them. Then again, Peter had an uncanny way of knowing, without being told.

Nevertheless, the situation in Gryffindor Tower was getting cozier all the time, and distracting Remus even worse than he thought possible. Before Remus knew what he was about, Gideon passed him in the corridor, reminding him that he had promised to tutor him and his twin brother that night.

‘Is it Thursday, already?’ Remus asked Gideon, wondering how he was ever going to find time to write his Transfiguration essay for the end of term. ‘Right…how about nine o’clock?’ He walked away quickly, self-conscious from the sudden tug he felt in his loins.

Making his excuses and reminding Sirius and Peter to have fun together, Remus climbed the Astronomy Tower steps that night, expecting to meet Fabian and Gideon Prewett. He was painfully aware that he had to hide what he knew from the younger boy, and to allow things to progress in their own time, without giving any foreknowledge away. In any event, Remus didn’t expect anything to happen tonight, since Fabian would be there, too.

He was wrong. He pushed the trap door open and ascended into starlight. The moon was just past new; barely a crescent-shaped sliver illuminated the stars around it. Gideon was waiting, bundled in his cloak.

‘Where’s Fabian?’ Remus asked.

‘He had to serve a detention,’ Gideon told him unconvincingly. ‘I can catch him up later.’ He jumped up to pat the telescope next to him. ‘I was thinking, since Venus is in retrograde this month, you could help me figure out how close it is to entering the sixth house? Also, I’m utter crap at plotting charts based on observation. Maybe you could show me the best way to get the angles and distances really precise? I’m pretty sure I’ve got Ganymede much too far away from Jupiter.’

Remus smiled benignly. ‘Sure,’ he said. Snippets of the letter passed before his eyes. _He’ll smile at me in the moonlight…._ ‘Why don’t you see if you can find Venus in the scope, and I’ll get my charts out.’

Gideon smiled, showing white, even teeth, and he bent over the telescope. He swung the arm too wildly, casting about the sky in a rush.

‘Steady on,’ Remus said, suppressing a chuckle. ‘Little moves, Gideon.’ He placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. _He’ll lean behind me, his hands guiding mine on the knobs…._ Remus tried non-chalantly to hold out his arms on either side of his pupil. ‘Here, let me focus it for you…describe what you’re looking at. Is it a sort of box with three stars on one side?’

‘Yeah, it’s…it’s got a bright star in the middle and four smaller ones that make corners.’

Remus gently pushed the scope up a bit. ‘Can you see the Dipper now?’ he asked.

‘Yeah.’ Gideon moved his hand to focus, and brushed Remus’s fingers. He jumped. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

‘It’s okay,’ Remus answered calmly, for all the world as if this weren’t exactly what Gideon had wanted. ‘Just…be more careful. It’s a delicate instrument. Now, Venus should be about ten degrees northwest.’ He fell into the mild rhythm that made his friends and professors assure him he would make an excellent teacher, if that’s what he wanted.

They began to work in earnest, Gideon’s obvious need for astronomy tutoring outweighing any plan for seduction he might have had. But then, after about half an hour, the fifth-year shivered and turned quickly away. ‘Getting a bit cold, isn’t it?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Do you want to go in? We can look at the charts inside the tower.’ _We’ll lie down on the open, flat surface of the turret, under the moon…._

‘No. I was thinking,’ he blinked his long lashes coquettishly. ‘Maybe we could take a broom ride?’

Remus bit his lip. Gideon was so studiously ingenuous. ‘I thought you said you were cold,’ he played along, right into Gideon’s fantasy as he remembered it.

_And I’ll offer to ride behind him so we can really see the stars…._ ‘Well, I thought maybe we could take a tour, sort of. Get a closer look at the stars.’

‘Ah,’ Remus said. Now that he was here, the illogic of the young man’s plan seemed almost too obvious to bear. He decided to change it slightly. ‘Is that really what you want?’ he asked in a low, sonorous voice.

Gideon shivered again. ‘No, it’s not,’ he admitted. He squared off on the far side of the tower. ‘What I really want to do is bugger you senseless, Remus Lupin.’ His eyes caught the slight moonlight and shone with icy grey reflection. ‘But you belong to Black. I know. I’m sorry.’ He lowered his bright eyes, hanging his head.

‘ _Black_ belongs to _me_ ,’ Remus corrected him reflexively, ‘and I love him, Gideon.’ Remus heard the boy sniff once. He crossed to him. ‘That’s never going to change. But…it so happens that I’ve talked to him about — you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you. Thought about you.’ He lifted Gideon’s chin and wiped away a boyish tear. ‘I admit that I rather hoped Fabian wouldn’t be here tonight.’

Gideon’s face transformed when he smiled. ‘You did? Fabe said you’d never be interested. He’s a bit pissed at me,’ he continued, and the sunlight in his face clouded over, despite the clear night sky. ‘Says I’m too much of a baby for you. Says I don’t know how to do for a chap.’ He reached up and gripped Remus’s cloak collar. ‘But I do. I promise I do. Come ride with me?’

Remus nodded. He had to stoop to kiss Gideon, he was that much shorter. ‘Where’s your broom?’ he whispered.

Gideon took his hand and led him to a shadowy ledge. ‘Up!’ he ordered, and the broomstick leapt to his hand. ‘Go ahead,’ he said, holding out the shaft to Remus.

Remus shook his head. ‘Bring it over here, first,’ he beckoned, walking back to the center of the tower. _We’ll fly together, my legs open and holding his, my arms around his waist, hands gripping the broom together, and we’ll buck and weave on the air, our hips moving in tandem…._ Remus had slightly different plans.

Gideon followed, the broom trailing behind him. Remus took off his cloak, cast a warming charm on it, and sat down, waving for Gideon to come over. ‘You’re Hufflepuff’s best player right now, aren’t you?’ he asked as he crossed his legs for comfort.

‘I guess so,’ Gideon answered modestly. But his shoulders were a bit straighter as he walked across the flagstones.

‘Bring that over here,’ Remus held out his hand for the broom handle. Gideon surrendered it and Remus set it on his cloak, pointed at his crotch. ‘Sit on it,’ Remus told Gideon.

He did so, stretching his legs out awkwardly on the ground. The cushioning charm kept him a mere inch away from the broom shaft, but Remus had a perfect view of Gideon’s lithe hips and slender legs and waist. With a steadying breath, Remus opened his trousers fly.

‘Okay, now I’m going to cast a charm on the handle,’ he told Gideon. ‘It’ll make this a bit easier. I want you to lift ever so slightly off the ground, and…fuck me.’

Gideon licked his lips. ‘What?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘Fuck me with it,’ Remus grinned. ‘Just gently rock your broom back and forth, I’ll help. I want you to ride it, and ride me on it.’

There was just enough moonlight to see the colour drain from Gideon’s cheeks, then reappear floridly red. ‘Okay,’ he breathed. He grasped the broom firmly and pushed up on his heels just a tiny bit. The broom left the ground an inch or so. 

Remus wriggled out of his trousers and positioned himself, holding the shaft at its tip. ‘Okay,’ he said after casting a lubrication charm. ‘Very gently, now.’

They began in a tentative rhythm, Gideon moving forward and back with extreme slowness. The broom handle slid into Remus gently, and he guided it back and forth in time to Gideon’s heel-rocking. Gideon stopped. ‘Hang on,’ he said, and he pulled the broom handle back, setting it down on the ground again. He stood, took off his cloak, and struggled out of his clothes. He put his cloak back on for warmth and sat back down, naked, a little in front of the magical cushion. ‘Oh, that’s better,’ he commented as he resumed his rhythm.

Remus fucked himself with the broom, eyes never leaving Gideon’s face. Every few strokes, Gideon would inch forward, moaning with pleasure at the feel of the polished wood against his balls. Eventually, his legs straddled Remus’s and their cocks brushed each other, both of them still using the broom to slide in and out of Remus’s arse. 

‘God, Remus, you’re so big!’ Gideon said suddenly, taking a good look at Remus’s groin.

Remus blushed. ‘Er…not really,’ he said, looking down. ‘I’m just…older than you,’ he finished lamely.

‘You’re even bigger than Fabian,’ Gideon said, touching him tentatively. ‘I know I’m kinda scrawny,’ he continued, measuring his erection next to Remus’s, ‘but…wow. Please, will you fuck me? I’ve never had anything that big inside me before. Please?’

The sound of those words coming out of that innocent page-boy’s face made Remus want nothing better. He pulled his hips back with a sigh of contentment and pushed Gideon toward the tail so he could also straddle the broom. He wriggled forward onto the cushion, then pulled Gideon down onto his lap. He hooked Gideon’s knees over his thighs and snuggled into the other boy’s cloak. ‘Can you see well enough to fly?’ he panted into Gideon’s chest.

Gideon whimpered in response, but moments later, Remus felt the broom rise from the ground. ‘Wait!’ Remus breathed, and they sank. ‘First, let’s get you into position…. Hold the broom where we can stand.’

It took a little manoeuvring and a reapplication of _lubrios_ , but eventually Remus held Gideon impaled on his cock. ‘Okay, now, let’s go,’ he told the younger man.

‘Hold tight,’ Gideon gasped, grasping the broom handle with his arms twined around Remus’s waist. He rocked backward and the broom lifted from the ground. They took off from the tower, circling it experimentally a few times before zooming over the fields and forest. 

Remus clung to Gideon’s waist, burying his head in the boy’s slight chest. Gideon’s every motion with the broom rubbed his small, slender cock against Remus’s stomach between his shirt tails and, better still, pushed his arse up and down on Remus’s engorged shaft. Gideon held the cloak closed with one hand, guiding the broom with the other. They couldn’t shift as much as they’d hoped, but managed to create a rocking rhythm that brought them both to the brink.

‘I’m…Remus, please, can you stroke me at all?’

Remus tried to let go with one hand, but felt like he would overbalance. ‘How’s this?’ he asked, lifting his legs against Gideon’s instead.

‘Lean back a bit,’ Gideon told him. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got you.’

The assurance was all Remus needed to climax. He bucked hard, then tried to quiet his spasms because Gideon almost lost hold of the broom. But the release of tension left him with a bit more flexibility and he found he could lean back, almost all the way back, his spine balancing on the broom.

Gideon leaned over with him, on top of him, and the broom’s speed increased. ‘Hook your legs…’ he suggested, and Remus found he could hold the tail with his ankle. The pressure of their bodies sent Gideon over the edge, too, but he held perfectly still. Wetness and cooling air between their abdomens was Remus’s only clue that the boy had reached orgasm. The broom came to a halt, hovering near the ground of the Quidditch pitch. They rolled off it, grateful for solid ground, and were soon wrapped up in the cloak together, limbs all tangled. 

Gideon kissed Remus’s chest. ‘That was better than I imagined,’ he said, wide-eyed and honest.

‘Really?’ Remus asked, petting the boy’s hair. ‘Didn’t disappoint?’

‘Not at all,’ Gideon said, wriggling a bit to bring his knee up under Remus’s balls.

‘I was worried we might fall,’ Remus admitted.

‘Wouldn’t let it happen,’ Gideon told him. He climbed on top of the broader seventh-year, fondling his shoulder and pec. ‘Are you cold?’

‘Getting cold,’ Remus said with a nod. ‘Let’s get back to the tower, okay?’

They sat this time, Gideon in front of Remus, and flew back up to their things on the highest turret.

‘Remus?’ Gideon asked as they dressed in a hurry, for the night was really getting chilly now. ‘Do you mind if I…can I tell Fabian? Only, I really don’t have secrets from him.’

‘I suppose,’ Remus said with a shrug. ‘Just as long as you realize, I still love Sirius.’

‘I know,’ Gideon said brightly. ‘I just…Fabian didn’t think I could do it. He’ll wish he’d been here.’

Remus looked up sharply, sure he hadn’t heard what he thought he’d heard. But before he could decide whether to say anything, Gideon giggled. ‘Muggles have a name for people who have sex in airplanes. The Mile High club. I don’t think we were that high, but I think being on a broomstick counts, don’t you?’

TBC….


	10. In which a surprise goes awry

Peter and Sirius had matched up several letters Thursday evening. They planned to use the morning post-owls Friday morning to “match” their candidates in time for the upcoming Hogsmeade week-end. Their letters weren’t the only deliveries, though. Three owls arrived with a deep rectangular box for James.

‘Wossat?’ Peter asked as James checked the return address and put the box across his knees.

‘Early Christmas present,’ James said through his eggs. He pulled out his wand and shrank the box to slide it into his bag.

Somehow Remus made it through lessons without falling asleep. He had returned to Gryffindor Tower after his late-night flight and found Sirius waiting up. Tired as he was, Remus hadn’t the heart to brush Sirius off, so he had spent another half-hour on his knees in front of Sirius before brushing his teeth a second time and finally collapsing into his pillows. He had dragged himself out of bed after too few hours, feeling almost as shaky as the day after a full moon.

He did fine until Advanced Potions, when Snape and Rosier slipped porcupine quills into his knotgrass and his cauldron boiled over. Professor Dee had a number of choice words for a student who had barely been accepted into the advanced class. ‘How many times must I tell you to keep your ingredients well-segregated? Come back Monday night at seven to complete your potion. And bring an essay with you, Lupin: six inches on the importance of proper storage of dry ingredients.’

Remus mumbled his acknowledgement. When Professor Dee turned back to his chalkboard, Remus glared over at Snape, who bowed his head mockingly with a perfectly straight face.

‘Brilliant,’ Remus grumbled all the way to Care of Magical Creatures. ‘Now I’ve got McGonagall’s essay, Dee’s, Flitwick’s charms practical, and Binns’s paper, all to finish this week.’ He sighed and took Sirius’s hand. ‘I’m _not_ going into the village tomorrow, okay? I’ve got to work.’

‘Yeah, all right,’ Sirius made no effort to conceal his disappointment. ‘Maybe I’ll see if Marina’s free.’

Peter caught up to them. ‘Guess what?’ he said broadly, sidling in between Sirius and James.

‘Got a date for Hogsmeade?’ James guessed.

‘Yeah, but who?’ Peter prompted.

‘Mmm...Hannah Burberry,’ Remus ventured. Peter had had a crush on her since second year.

‘Yup.’ They all stopped in the middle of the dying lawns.

‘Really, Peter?’

‘That’s brilliant, Pete.’

‘Way to go!’ They surrounded him with congratulations. James caught him round the neck and rubbed his hair briskly against his scalp. Sirius chucked him on the arm. Remus just smiled warmly.

‘What convinced her?’ James asked. 

‘I, er...ate an éclair for her,’ Peter muttered. Remus burst out laughing.

 

Remus fell asleep over his books in the common room on Friday night and woke to the sounds of underclassmen thundering through on their way to the wizarding village. Yawning, he scratched his head and decided he could go upstairs for a bit of proper sleep, then get back to it about mid-morning.

But when he came into the dormitory, he saw James dive for his bed with a yelp. He caught a glimpse of black and white and heard the crinkle of stiffened cloth before James yanked his curtains shut.

‘What are you doing?’ they asked each other at once.

‘I was waiting for Lily,’ James said. ‘You?’

‘Fell asleep downstairs, came up for a nap. Why are you hiding in there?’

He heard more rustling of cloth, then a muffled ‘sproing.’ ‘Ouch. I’m hiding because...this is dead embarrassing.’

‘James, does whatever you’ve got in there have anything to do with that box you got yesterday?’

James was silent so long that Remus knew he had to be right. ‘Look, it’s a surprise for Lily. I asked her to come up here before we went into town.’

‘Okay,’ Remus said slowly. He thought about the box, the muffled sound of netting and the whisper of satin, the flash of black before James cut off his view, the snapping sound, like a springing elastic, and a startling vision of...lace stockings?

Remus reached out and jiggled the curtains at the foot of the bed. James fell for the bait, clutching the edges of the curtains to keep them together. When he did, Remus rounded the bed lightning-quick and tugged on the middle of the curtains alongside the bed. James whirled around at the sudden unveiling. He stood on his covers, his legs looking even longer because of the short skirt, encased in fishnets, held up by suspenders. The skirt itself was very short indeed, starched quite stiff and held out by crinoline, with a crisp, white apron edged in lace over the top.

‘A French maid’s outfit?’ Remus dissolved into fits of laughter. ‘What the fuck are you doing in a French maid’s costume?’

James fumed. ‘Lily and I were talking about the letters. Someone wrote in about imagining his girl in a French maid’s getup. I didn’t get it - I mean, why would anyone care about a Beauxbatons uniform, right?’

‘Right. So Lily explained that it’s the equivalent of the wizarding fantasy of a house-elf’s pillowcase and tea-towel?’

‘Yes. But that’s never been a big one for me. I mean, I’ve seen it on one of mum’s WWN dramas....’

‘Yeah, my mum watches those sometimes, too.’

‘But Lily said this was way better, and if I didn’t think so, I should just order one and see what the fuss was about. So I did.’

‘But you didn’t realize that the costume is for women?’ Remus surmised. 

‘Not at first,’ James admitted. ‘But then I opened it up. And I thought, “Well!” but Lily would _never_ wear it.’

‘She did suggest it,’ Remus began, but stopped at the look in James’s eyes. ‘Yeah, probably a trap. She’d kill you for going through with it,’ he agreed.

‘And...well, I was sitting here, thinking about how to salvage the situation.... And it looked so inviting. I just wanted to see what the mystique was.’

‘Well, it looks quite fetching on you,’ Remus told him honestly. ‘Where’s your feather-duster?’

James blushed beet red and drew forth a white-plumed duster from the tissue in the box. Remus grinned. ‘We had both at home,’ he explained. ‘House-elves for the upstairs work and the cooking, and a Muggle housekeeper and chauffeur. But never a French upstairs maid. Mum thinks those costumes are just silly.’

‘Ours are all elves. Sirius’s too,’ James put in. But then Remus shut the dormitory door. ‘Remus...what are you...?’

‘I thought I told you to clean this room,’ Remus said lasciviously.

‘Oh,’ James said, eyes widening. He climbed down off the bed, and affected an accent. ‘Mais, M’sieur Ray-moos, zer’ is so mush mess! You boys are ‘ow you say, peegs. I cannot be eggspected to be done so soon, _ç’est impossible_!’

‘I don’t want to hear excuses,’ Remus said, sitting down on the chair beside James’s bed. ‘Now, we hired you to perform a task for us, and if you’re not going to provide satisfactory service, perhaps we should reconsider your situation.’

James minced forward, pleading. ‘Oh, but M’sieur Lyoopan, ze cleaning? Zis is not ze only serveece I offair, _n’est-çe pas_?’ He ruffled the feather duster in Remus’s face and bent over to show his ‘cleavage.’ ‘I am certaine ve can come to zum zort of... _arrangement_?’

Remus pursed his lips. ‘Oh, I think there might be something you can do well enough....’ He pulled James into his lap and began to kiss him. His hands wandered over the satin dress, up into the scratchy folds of the crinoline, and finally he found his way under all the layers to James’s net-clad thighs. From there he slid his hands up the inside of James’s legs all the way to his--

‘Knickers?’ Remus broke the kiss in surprise. ‘James, are you wearing girl’s knickers, too?’

James pressed him into the back of the chair. ‘Shut up.’

Remus didn’t argue. The bulge of James’s dick stuffed into the lacy panty was too compelling. He worked his fingers into the crotch of the pants, squeezing James’s sac inside the lace. They both groaned appreciatively.

‘What if Lily comes in?’ Remus asked between kissing James’s pouting mouth and nibbling his neck.

‘She can bloody join in. Remus...want to fuck you.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Remus pressed up into James’s bottom. He wrapped his arms around James’s waist and stood up. He didn’t often display his natural strength, but every little crumple of netting against his legs made his balls throb. He shifted them onto James’s bed and fell back, letting James lie on top of him. James grabbed at Remus’s robes. He rolled off long enough to let Remus ruck up his robes and free his legs from his trousers and underwear. James turned his back to Remus and gestured vaguely at the zipper.

‘Leave it on,’ Remus breathed raggedly. ‘Just get the lube out of Sirius’s drawer, and come back here quick.’

James scurried across the room. His crinoline barely covered his arse when he bent over the bedside table. Moments later, he straightened and turned, the bottle in his hand. On his way back, he remembered his character.

‘Oh, M’sieur Lyoopan, sank you zo mush for zis second shance. I promeese to be oh so good for you, M’sieur....’ He crawled over his trunk and the foot of his bed, a predatory gleam in his eyes. ‘I vill show you, M’sieur, ‘ow ve, ‘ow you say...make ze bed? Or do I mean, make it in ze bed?’

An hour later, when Lily arrived, James had changed, but he decided not to explain why Remus was taking a nap in his bed. He just told her that he really, really wanted to try on a pillowcase or a tea-towel sometime.

 

TBC....


	11. In which plans are laid

Remus had been working so hard to get his assignments turned in on time that the full moon, which he always tracked precisely, snuck up behind him when he wasn’t looking. Sirius pointed out two days beforehand that they had been planning the calendar so intensely, they hadn’t thought about this month’s adventure.

‘Would you…would you mind much if we didn’t break out of the shack this month?’ Remus asked the other three when Sirius brought it up. ‘I just…I think we could all use a rest.’

Sirius frowned. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ he asked. ‘You do look piquey.’

‘I…I’m just a bit over-extended, Sirius,’ Remus told him.

‘Well, okay. But we’ve tried staying in the shack before, remember? Moony usually has different ideas. Don’t you think you’d be better off to run off some of your frustration?’

‘Remus, why don’t you ask McGonagall if you can skive off tomorrow?’ James suggested. ‘Rest up before the moon.’

Remus sighed. ‘No, that’s okay. I’ll be fine.’

‘Sure?’ Sirius pressed.

‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ And as if saying it made it so, Remus told himself that he was okay, he could make it to the end of term, relax over the holidays. 

‘Good, because I think I have a solution to the other half of our dating service problem,’ Peter put in. ‘There’s a number of people who just aren’t satisfied with anything less than Remus,’ he said. ‘I have a plan.’

 

‘No,’ Remus shook his head when Peter suggested it.

‘But…’

‘No. I’m not giving anyone my hair for Polyjuice Potion.’

‘Even if it’s just us?’

‘No.’ Remus pulled one knee to his chest.

‘Remus, it’s a good suggestion. What’s the problem?’ Sirius sat next to him, one arm around his hunched shoulders.

‘My scar. You’ve all seen it – you all know. But anyone takes Polyjuice of me, they’ll have the scar, right?’

‘Didn’t Gideon—’

Remus shook his head. ‘Left my shirt on.’ He rubbed his shoulder absently. ‘I know you meant well, Peter, but…I don’t think so.’

‘Remus, you’ve no idea, have you?’ James said gently. ‘You’re amazing. Tell you what. Let us brew up a batch, and one of us will take it, so you can see. If you’re still uncomfortable, okay, no problem.’

Between James’s confession and Sirius’s reassuring squeeze, Remus nodded. ‘If we swipe the ingredients from Dee this week,’ Peter scribbled on his notepad, ‘the potion should be ready about the middle of January.’

‘Okay. You’re right, James, I don’t get it. But if you think you can prove something to me by taking it, okay.’

 

Later, Sirius said to him: ‘What about your other dates? They’ll see, if you’re with them. I don’t think Kingsley will put up with you keeping your shirt on.’

‘I know. I don’t know.’ Remus rolled onto his side and Sirius spooned up behind him. ‘I’m going to miss you over the holidays,’ he said. ‘Sure you can’t come back to London with me?’

‘They want me to come home. There’s…there’s some business we need to take care of at the estate.’

‘Selling more old paintings and silverware?’ Sirius asked gently. He had never really cared about his family’s status or wealth, but watching Remus’s family slowly divesting everything in order to maintain their title and lands, when they so clearly cared for their tenants, somehow struck Sirius as a terrible irony.

‘I think so. Mum said that the roof of the guest wing is finally too dangerous to stay; we need to move anything worth saving out of there before the whole wing collapses.’

‘Maybe I could come help,’ Sirius suggested.

‘Maybe,’ Remus said in a way that made it clear he wouldn’t suggest it to his parents. His father’s pride ran as swiftly in his veins as the wolf. Sirius hugged him and dropped it.

‘Full moon tomorrow.’

‘Yeah.’

 

Moony snarled at the three figures in the room with him, until the strong odor of pack drifted through his post-transformation haze. He was aware that something had changed since the last time they were together. Wormtail and Prongs didn’t just smell like pack anymore. They smelled more like Padfoot, like mates. Moony snapped his jaws. Made no sense! Pack, yes, but Padfoot was mate.

Prongs pushed forward, horns low, hooves clicking on the wood floor. He whuffed from his nostrils, not commandingly, but questioningly. 

Moony shook his fur out from neck to tail. The overlying scent of mating clung to Prongs and Wormtail in ways he did not understand. But Padfoot was the same. He lunged forward, nipping at Padfoot’s ears playfully, seeking solid footing somehow. Padfoot responded predictably, and that reassured Moony. He wrestled with the large dog, but did not use his teeth, allowing his mate an unusual amount of freedom. Padfoot’s tail wagged rapidly and he ran back to Prongs, stopped, then ran back to Moony. Then he ran back to Moony again, and crossed the room quickly to the bed where Wormtail watched everything. Back to Moony. The message wasn’t lost on Moony, but he still wasn’t ready to accept the changes that Padfoot evidently thought were natural.

Moony butted his snout against Padfoot and rubbed the top of his head against Padfoot’s jaw. He turned to Prongs, who lowered his antlers low enough to touch the floor. Moony inched forward, tongue out to catch the scents better. He took a tentative lap at Prongs’s foreleg, found the taste matched the scent, and rubbed the top of his head under Prongs’s chest, forcing the big neck up and away. 

Wormtail scrambled down from the bed and into Padfoot’s fur. Moony turned at Prongs’s snort and stamp of impatience. Moony did not need to be encouraged; he ran down the stairs toward the loose clapboards that would release them into the night.

Moony tolerated Prongs and Wormtail’s presence while they ran up the hillside to the inviting trees, but once they reached the forest floor, his plan changed. He nipped Padfoot on the neck playfully and shot ahead of the others. The dog paced him, and soon they had left the other two far behind. Moony put his shoulder against his companion’s dark fur, directing the other through the undergrowth. He pushed him to the right, then took up the lead again, knowing that his mate – his true mate – would not fall behind. They reached a small patch of clear ground and there, Moony lunged.

He pounced and rolled, catching the dog in the grip of his forelegs. Padfoot twined his legs in Moony’s and pulled them to their hindfeet. Instead of wrestling, Moony licked Padfoot’s face in glee. They rolled to the ground, and Padfoot was up first, circling the wolf lazily. Moony pounced again, this time pulling Padfoot to the ground beneath him and holding him in place with claw and paw. He settled his weight against Padfoot’s hindlegs, his prick already growing in anticipation. Padfoot whined appreciatively as the wolf’s thick member probed between his legs. He dug his claws into the earth, pushing up against the flesh behind him. Moony thrust efficiently, biting his mate’s shoulder as he rutted. This was true mating; the others may have a claim, somehow, but Padfoot was the only one Moony wanted under the moon.

He pushed forward as far as he could, seeking to dominate by sheer force. Padfoot stilled beneath him and Moony scrabbled his paws along Padfoot’s flanks. His tongue lolled out of his mouth and his breathing quickened. He licked the thick fur at the base of Padfoot’s neck, right where moments ago he had bitten. This was right; this was as it should be. He quickened his thrusts, feeling the dog buck underneath him despite his earlier decision to hold still. Moony whuffled softly, whining rather than howling. He wanted to howl, but he wanted to avoid the rest of his pack a bit longer.

Finally, when the knot at the base of his prick loosened suddenly and he felt the rush of seed spurt forth into his mate, Moony threw back his head and howled long and loud. He slipped out of Padfoot, backed off the dog, and lapped tenderly at his mate’s arse, where blood and seed leaked into the short fur there. Padfoot looked up at him and whined. Moony circled him twice, then licked his snout, and Padfoot licked back.

The others found them there, and Moony allowed Prongs to lie beside them while Wormtail scratched Moony behind his ears. Packs had their advantages, after all.

TBC….


	12. In which Remus has a Happy Christmas

Remus woke the next morning in the bed of the Shrieking Shack with his face in Sirius’s hair and something warm against his back. He lifted himself up slightly, enough to see a pudgy arm over his waist. Peter. James lay on Sirius’s other side. Weak light seeped through the cracks in the boards. He flopped his head back onto the mattress, allowing himself to drift and doze as he only could in the wake of a transformation. He had the vaguest memories of Moony’s surprise at the sudden change in scent, but evidently the wolf’s behaviour didn’t seem to matter to them in human form. He fell back to sleep. When Madam Pomfrey woke him later, they were gone. He slipped inside the circle of her cloak and allowed her to guide him back to the hospital wing to finish recuperating.

 

‘And then Lily distracted Dee while James slipped into the Storeroom under the cloak for the boomslang skin and bicorn horn,’ Peter told him quietly over a Chocolate Frog. ‘It was brilliant. We’ve set up the cauldron in our bath.’

‘I’m glad it went well. Where are the others, anyway?’

‘James and Sirius have Quidditch practice. Lily said to tell you she’d see you back in the common room; she wanted to get some work done.’

Remus nodded. Peter had dropped a couple classes after their OWLs, so he had more free time than most. ‘Well, I think I’m okay to go,’ he announced, swinging his legs out of the bed.

‘Mr Lupin, you stay in that bed,’ Madam Pomfrey called from her office. She charged up the row of beds to his station. ‘At least until I’ve checked your vital signs again,’ she told him as she halted by the bedside. She held out her wand and waved it slowly over him from head to toe. ‘Hmph. You’re in the pink, Mr Lupin,’ she told him, sounding slightly disappointed. ‘But you’re still weak. Mr Pettigrew, if you will make sure he goes straight back to bed?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Peter jumped to his feet eagerly. ‘C’mon, mate. Can’t have you coming down with flu this close to the holidays,’ he said loudly, to indicate this month’s fiction.

Remus shrugged into his robes right over his hospital pyjamas and followed meekly.

 

The next few days were a flurry of activity in preparation for the holidays. Sirius was looking forward to adding some decorations to his new flat; he invited everyone, including Remus again, to drop in anytime.

‘I know you have family things,’ he told Remus glumly. ‘But owl me if you want me to come. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Remus agreed again, in the voice that really meant, ‘But I won’t.’

He changed trains for Bath and slept most of the way. His father met him at the station. ‘We’ve let Turner go,’ he explained as he led them to the old car. It was in fine condition, considering its age, but was held together now more with spells than with steel. His father stalled the engine three times getting out of the carpark, and tapped the dash in frustration when it stalled a fourth time. The engine sprang to life and the wheel steered on its own. He turned to face his son.

‘Cosgrove’s talking to Christie’s Magical Division; we found an old talking portrait in one of the closets on the third floor of the guest wing. I thought we’d moved everything worth saving a while ago, but there it was. He’s having it appraised. It needs some restoration, of course, but between that and some of the disused furniture, I think we can make enough for this year’s taxes and to put a bit aside.’

Remus said nothing. His father looked very tired. His hair was grey at the temples and toward the back, and his eyes squinted a bit as he adjusted the steering wheel slightly to slide through the traffic onto the road that would take them to Aethenum Crossing, their village.

‘Everything else okay?’ Remus asked non-chalantly. ‘I mean, usually, you don’t call me home at Christmas.’

His father sucked his cheeks in a bit as he frowned. ‘After what happened last year—’ he began.

‘It’s fine, Dad,’ Remus cut him off. ‘It was an accident.’

‘I don’t want you associating with that Black any more than you have to,’ Julius Lupin said tersely. ‘I thought perhaps he’d be different from his family, especially being in Gryffindor.’ He gripped the wheel, although he didn’t need to steer hardly at all. ‘I think it’s just better if you’re home, when you’re off school.’

Remus said nothing. He stared out the window into the night. 

‘Anyway, there’s a lot to do here,’ Julius continued. ‘And…your mother could use the help.’

Remus turned sharply, all thoughts of arguing Sirius’s character flown. ‘I thought you said…your last letter, you said she was home from St. Mungo’s, she was doing better.’

‘She is,’ Julius said. ‘She just gets tired rather quickly.’

‘Well…can’t Nipsy, or Tinny—’ Remus suggested.

‘Oh, they do for her most of the time,’ Julius explained matter-of-factly. ‘But work like this…. It breaks their hearts to see us reduced to selling off the estate, one heirloom at a time. Tinny, poor little thing, gets so upset she can barely put together a sandwich. I’ve given up asking them to help with the inventory.’

Remus sighed. ‘He moved out of his family’s house, Dad,’ he said slowly. ‘Up and left, because he’s not like them. He’d understand about Tinny.’

Julius said nothing. The car turned, and the headlamps picked out the stone bridge which spanned the stream marking their eastern border. Julius slowed the car with a tap of his wand, and they tottered across the rough-hewn stones, bouncing up and down and bumping when the tyres hit road again. 

They rode in silence through the gates of Aethenum Park and around the pink marble house with its wide drive to the converted stables in the back. Julius pulled the release for the boot and Remus climbed out and went to get his trunk.

‘Let Nipsy,’ Julius told him, taking his son’s arm lightly. ‘It’ll make him feel useful.’

Remus relented. They went in through the kitchens, where the two house-elves hugged Remus joyously and told them that Mrs Lupin had taken some supper in her apartments and retired already. Remus, uncomfortable at the prospect of dinner alone with his father and the unfinished, unspoken business between them, asked Nipsy to take his trunk up to his rooms and asked Tinny if she could kindly bring him a tray as well, since he was so tired from travelling.

 

Despite the dismal business of clearing out several rooms’ worth of furniture, bric-a-brac, and other heirlooms, it was a fairly pleasant holiday. His mother seemed much better than she had been over the summer, and as long as he and his father avoided the subject of one Sirius Black, they got on as well as they usually did. Athena Lupin, who had been Muggle-born and thus didn’t share all her husband’s historical rivalries, sympathized with Remus when he spoke to her alone about Sirius’s obvious rift with his family, but ultimately shrugged and said that soon enough, Remus would be able to Apparate and then he could see whomever he liked.

‘Speaking of which,’ she said to him as she went through one of the jewel cases in her room, ‘have you written to set up a testing date yet?’

‘No,’ Remus admitted. ‘I’ll write to Mr Thrusher. I don’t know if there’s any restrictions or special arrangements I need to make through Werewolf Support Services. He’ll know.’

The day before Christmas Eve, an owl arrived for Remus from Sirius. It was signed only with a pawprint, but it bore his usual economy, along with knowledge of the Lord Aethenum’s family traditions: _Light a fire in your bedroom fireplace before dark tomorrow and come back there right after you get back from the parish services._

Remus folded the note and put it in his pocket. 

The next night, Remus cadged an extra bit of coal and firewood from Nipsy, and gave him instructions to leave the fire banked, but not to let it go out while the Lupins were at services. He changed into his best suit and joined his parents for their landlordly duty: twice a year, the Lord and Lady of Aethenum paid their respects to God and Jesus at the head of their community. But Remus found it difficult not to fidget during the mass; he wished the organ would play the carols faster; willed the villagers not to spend their usual hour or so welcoming the young master home from school, tipping their hats to Lord Aethenum, and trying to put in a word about the new irrigation ditch they’d been digging for the last five years. Sirius had something planned! A Christmas surprise. Remus willed himself calm, quiet, his usual reserved self. He politely shook hands with half the town, and offered to drive the sleigh home so that he could at least be doing something. It was all he could do to keep the horses at a trot, rather than snap them into a canter or worse, a full gallop.

They got home and Mrs Lupin announced that she felt extremely tired. Julius used his wand to Apparate them both to their apartments, and while Remus felt guilty at finding fortune in his mother’s condition, he couldn’t help being glad they had retired already. He could go to his rooms without having to make an excuse. He had a feeling he knew what Sirius’s surprise might be, and he was also grateful that it could be delivered in his bedroom, though quite _how_ , he wasn’t sure.

Nipsy had thoughtfully built up the fire a bit when the family arrived home and it was crackling merrily when Remus reached his room. But the room itself was empty. Remus sat at the edge of his bed, knee resting lightly against the cherry footboard, and summoned a book to read while he waited.

‘Remus?’ Sirius’s voice called through the fire.

‘Sirius!’ Remus slid off the bed and came to the hearth. Sirius’s head was nowhere in sight.

‘Surprise!’ Sirius’s voice floated past the flames. ‘I got my flat connected to the Floo network. But I can’t get a full connection; your bedroom doesn’t seem to be listed.’

‘No, only the parlors downstairs, and the kitchen fire.’

‘Damn. I was hoping one of us could come through. I miss you, Moony.’

‘I miss you too, puppy,’ Remus said. ‘But thank you for trying.’

‘Can you talk for a while?’ Sirius asked.

‘Yes, of course I can,’ Remus answered through a smile. ‘You sound lonely.’

‘Yeah. I wish you’d come to London. James and Lily were invited to Christmas with her folks, and Peter’s brother came home unexpectedly, so it turns out I’m on my own.’

‘Sirius, I’m sorry,’ Remus said sincerely. ‘It’s good that I did come home, though,’ he continued. And he told Sirius about his parents.

‘I never meant to get you hurt or in trouble!’ Sirius’s voice came through the connection, raised and upset.

‘I know that,’ Remus assured him. ‘It’s okay, puppy. You know my dad – he just worries about me.’

‘He needn’t do,’ Sirius insisted, petulantly. ‘I’m not like _them_.’

‘I know,’ Remus said again. ‘So, what’s your flat like, then?’ he asked to change the subject.

‘It’s absolutely amazing,’ Sirius told him. ‘I’m in Soho; it’s brilliant. Everyone here is colourful. I think I might dye my hair blue, what do you think?’

‘I think you’re insane. Have you decorated for Christmas?’

‘Yeah. James helped me carry a tree in the Muggle way. I don’t have any proper ornaments, though, so I just strung some popcorn and a bit of tinsel. Next year we’ll get some singing birds and a few fairies, all right?’

‘Sure,’ Remus said. It amused him that Sirius already saw them living there together.

‘I’ve got the tree in front of the window in the sitting room,’ Sirius continued. ‘Well, actually, it’s sort of the whole flat,’ he admitted. ‘It’s more a bedsit, really. But it’s got a proper kitchen and a walk-in shower. Oh – and I hung that Tornadoes poster up in the loft, next to the wardrobe. And I’m putting in another bookshelf this week – Lily found one for me to replace the milk crates. I wish you were here to see it.’

‘Me, too,’ Remus agreed. He jumped over his footboard and grabbed his pillows so he could lie down next to the hearth. ‘Sirius?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry I was a git about coming to London.’

‘No, I understand. Just as well I didn’t invite myself out there, eh?’

‘Yeah. Keep talking. I’m going to change out of my suit if I’m going to sit on the hearth.’

‘The grey suit?’ Sirius asked. ‘Or the dark blue jacket we bought last summer?’

‘The gr—the blue one,’ Remus lied, fingering the buttons on the jacket.

Sirius chuckled on the other side of the fire. ‘So…you’re changing now, then?’

‘Yes,’ Remus said slowly. ‘But I wish _you_ were the one undressing me.’

‘Close your eyes,’ Sirius called to him. ‘I’m unbuttoning the jacket for you.’ Remus let his fingers act for Sirius. ‘I’m sliding my hands around your slender waist, inside the slippery lining of your coat. I squeeze you lightly, pulling you to my chest.’

‘Yes.’ Remus opened his jacket and let his hands curl around his own waist, squeezing the way Sirius described.

‘I’m loosening your tie,’ Sirius continued. ‘And I’m pulling it out of your collar.’

Remus had already taken off his tie, but he touched his neck anyway. ‘And you’re unbuttoning my shirt,’ he prompted. ‘One button at a time.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Sirius agreed. ‘After each one, I part the cotton a little bit more, and kiss the exposed skin.’

Remus worked his buttons open, fluttering his fingertips over the skin as if they were soft, thin lips.

‘Is your shirt open?’ Sirius asked after a minute.

‘Yes,’ Remus told him.

‘Good.’ Remus could hear the grin. ‘I kiss you deeply, our mouths searching for each other. I hold you close to me, ease the shirt off your shoulders. I kiss my way down your neck and run my tongue over your scar.’

Remus closed his eyes and caressed his scar. ‘You pull off my shirt by the sleeves, and then throw me a look that tells me to just leave it on the chair, when I try to break away to hang it up.’

‘Damn right,’ Sirius laughed. ‘And I pull you back in for another long kiss. You place your hands against my chest, rub my nipples a bit....’

‘And you sink to your knees, kissing your way down my front, so that you can concentrate on my trousers....’

‘You curl your fingers through my hair as I gently pull your zipper away from your shorts and open the fly so I can touch...what’s inside,’ Sirius finished lamely.

Remus smiled. ‘Mm.’ He was a bit embarrassed to continue, but it was too good to stop. ‘You slide my trousers down my legs,’ he continued, doing so for himself, ‘and toss them aside to be dealt with later. Then, grabbing a blanket off the bed, you lead me to the hearth and push me down with your kisses.’

‘Yes. We lie down on the blanket--’

‘Under the blanket. On the rug,’ Remus corrected as he positioned himself.

‘Sorry,’ Sirius said from the flames.

‘It’s okay.’

‘On the rug,’ Sirius said with the air of one who is rewinding a tape, ‘and I cover you with my body.’

‘Gods, yes. And you run one hand between my legs and over my crotch.’

Sirius was breathing heavily on his side of the fire. ‘And you hook your leg around my leg, and we grind together....’

‘The fire’s hot....’

‘And I throw off the blanket and lift myself on my hands to pump against you....’

‘Yes, oh, yes,’ Remus said, touching himself. ‘And you press your finger slowly into my arse....’

Sirius grunted faintly. ‘Gods, Remus, want to touch you so bad.’

‘Touch yourself for me, puppy,’ Remus said into the flames.

‘Nggh!’ Sirius shouted through the floo.

‘Imagine I’m going down on you right now.’ Remus licked his lips. ‘Tasting that sweet cock of yours.’ He suppressed a giggle. ‘And you’re pressing against my face, hot and red and leaking....’

‘Jesus, Remus,’ he heard from the fire. ‘I wish you were here. Oh, gods!’ His voice turned into spasmodic screaming. Remus’s eyes rolled back in his head and he squeezed his prick a few times and came as well.

‘Sirius?’ he called when he resurfaced.

‘Yes, puppy?’

‘Happy Christmas.’

TBC....


	13. In which Andromeda and Ted play host

Thanks to the judicious pinching of a little Floo powder, Remus and Sirius were able to Floo properly two nights later. Kissing over the fire was very uncomfortable, though, and their one attempt to give head through the flames ended quite suddenly when Sirius forgot to add more Floo at a strategic moment.

‘Oh, this is bollocks,’ Remus said after casting another burn-healing charm on his face. ‘I’m just going to come to London a few days early.’

‘Your Dad….’

‘Don’t worry about my Dad. Just come to Victoria Station tomorrow afternoon and pick me up.’

 

It was quite possibly the closest Remus and his father had ever come to having a row. Remus told his parents that he’d got an owl from James inviting everyone up to London for New Year’s eve. Julius shook his head and simply said, ‘We need you here.’ Both Lupin men expressed themselves calmly, quietly, and with steel-like stubbornness. 

Finally Athena intervened. ‘For heaven’s sake, Julius. We don’t need him here half so much as you want him to stay. He’s seventeen. Let him go spend New Year’s Eve with his friends.’

Julius patted his wife’s arm as she began to cough. Remus hung his head, feeling doubly worse for causing her frustration. Another time, he might have suggested that they reinvestigate a Muggle doctor--Healers really couldn’t remedy cancer very well--but now was not the time to have that conversation, either.

But when her coughing subsided, when his father looked up and Remus met his gaze, he knew that the visit would be allowed. 

‘No illegal magic,’ Julius warned grudgingly.

‘Right.’

‘And no wild parties.’

‘Dad, when have I ever been to a wild party?’ Remus smiled sheepishly. What his father did not know would not hurt him.

‘If you go to Picadilly Circus at midnight, watch yourself,’ Julius continued.

Remus frowned. ‘Picadilly? Hadn’t thought about it. Good idea, though. Thanks, Dad!’ He stood up and hugged his father warmly, kissed his mother’s cheek, and ran out to throw his things in his trunk. If he hurried, he could get to the station before the twelve-thirty train. He’d be in London by tea-time.

 

‘I’ve got the best news!’ Sirius told him when they met at the station. ‘Andromeda invited us to dinner.’

Remus had met Andromeda a few times before she left school. She was Sirius’s favourite cousin, and had been summarily kicked out of the Black family for marrying a Muggle-born wizard: Ted Tonks. Ted and Andromeda lived in a ramshackle flat near the Thames in an area almost all populated by West Indian and Creole blacks. They grew their own marijuana and burned patchouli incense night and day. They had a little girl, Nymphadora, aged nearly two, who was at present visiting Ted's parents in Cambridge. But they didn't let a little thing like offspring get in the way of their lifestyle. Ted swore by the merits of yoga and Andromeda had turned vegetarian within six months of dating him. If Remus did go to a “wild party,” in defiance of his father’s orders, it would undoubtedly be because the Tonkses took them to one.

‘Sirius!’ Andromeda squealed when she opened the door. ‘Welcome to the outside!’ She pulled him through the threshold and hugged him. ‘How does it feel to be emancipated from the Noble and Ancient House of Whack-jobs?’

Sirius grinned. ‘Pretty good,’ he said, looking round the flat. 

‘Remus, hey!’ Andromeda continued, tugging on Remus’s sleeve to bring him inside, too. ‘Sirius said you were visiting. Helping our young man about town settle in to his new bachelor pad?’

‘Er...yeah, something like that,’ Remus blushed, then sneezed. ‘Do you always burn incense?’ he asked.

‘Oh, no, you’re allergic?’ Andromeda’s face clouded. ‘Hm. I think I’ve got some sage. Would that be better?’

‘If Sirius’s friend’s sinuses are bothering him,’ Ted commented, coming through the bead curtain that separated the kitchen from the hallway, ‘you could offer him a quick one before dinner.’

Remus glanced at Sirius questioningly. ‘Don’t worry,’ Andromeda said, laughing. ‘He means a smoke, not a shag.’

‘Oh,’ Remus said, much relieved. ‘I don’t smoke.’

Sirius leaned over and whispered in his ear. ‘Not cigarettes, Moony.’ He followed Andromeda through to the sitting room. ‘He can have a puff off mine, Andy,’ Sirius announced.

Andromeda was already dipping into a large samovar. She retrieved three short, thin white rolls of paper and brought them over to the coffee table. Flopping onto the red sofa, she reached for the matchbox, then crossed her ankles on the table and lit all three. She handed one to Ted, who settled himself in a large wicker chair and puffed like a professional, and one to Sirius, who took a more experimental drag off his. He inhaled too deeply and coughed hard.

‘Steady on,’ Ted said, jumping up to pat Sirius on the back. ‘This is quality stuff, this is. If you’re not going to treat it right, we’ll save it for later.’

‘Ease off, Ted,’ Andromeda said lightly. ‘He’s just a pup. Let him get the hang of it. Sure you don’t want one, Remus?’

Remus took another look at Sirius, trying again to smoke the thin joint, doing it more naturally this time. ‘I don’t think so, thanks,’ he said politely.

‘It’s jolly good,’ Sirius told him. ‘Try it.’

With another glance at Andromeda, who nodded encouragingly, Remus took the sliver of paper and leaf from Sirius. The pungent smoke tingled his nostrils almost as uncomfortably as the patchouli. He placed the butt end between his lips and inhaled slowly, just enough to taste it on his tongue. Almost instantly, his tongue went numb, but the lingering, acrid/sweet taste of the pot did open his sinuses as Ted promised. He exhaled equally slowly, enjoying the sensation of smoke trickling through his nose.

‘He’s a natural!’ Ted beamed, and this revelation seemed to secure Ted’s approval.

‘So, Remus, have you seen Sirius’s flat yet?’ Andromeda asked as she took another puff.

‘Yeah, we dropped my trunk there before we came over,’ Remus said. ‘It’s a total cesspit already.’ They all laughed.

‘I’ve never had to do my own laundry,’ Sirius protested. ‘I was only in the place a month before we went back to school. After we finish I’ll spruce it right up.’

‘Well, I’m glad Alphie saw to it you had enough to get by for a while,’ Andromeda said. ‘He helped us out too a bit, didn’t he, Ted? Gave us enough for furniture and even his old flying carpet with the charm removed for a wedding present.’

‘Alphie was a rebel,’ Sirius eulogized, sucking on his joint. ‘A...pioneer.’

‘To Alphie!’ Andromeda toasted, then puffed.

‘To Alphie!’ Sirius and Ted repeated, taking hits. Sirius held his joint out to Remus.

‘To Alphie!’ Remus said quietly, feeling silly. He inhaled more deeply this time. He could hear everyone’s breathing change, could almost feel the vibration under his skin as the marijuana entered his bloodstream. He doubted it would last long, though - his metabolism made it very hard to get drunk, too, and he’d tried once or twice.

‘What’s for spupper?’ Sirius asked after he accepted the joint back and toked up again.

‘There’s an Indian takeaway round the corner,’ Ted told them. ‘The menu’s in the kitchen - neither Andy nor I are much for cooking. I thought we’d just call in our order and I can Apparate over for it.’

‘Sounds grape – I mean, great,’ said Sirius. ‘What do you think?’ he asked Remus.

‘I’ve never had Indian,’ Remus admitted.

‘Sure you have - you’ve had that tandoori stuff at school,’ Sirius told him.

‘Oh, the house-elves don’t really do it justice,’ Andromeda said. ‘Ted’s brilliant picking out food for beginners, Remus - we’ll fix you up. They have a really amazing saag curry....’

They got the curry, and masala, and a moghlai dish, with plenty of dal, naan, raiti, and a lassi apiece. Ted insisted he was fine to Apparate and he was back before the steam even began to pucker the cardboard lids on the aluminium containers. Remus discovered he liked Indian food. But after dinner, things got really interesting.

Andromeda watched them all through the meal, and as they lit up four fresh joints after finishing their lassis, she said, ‘You two an item, then?’

Remus coughed over his toke. Sirius dragged on his defiantly and placed his hand on Remus’s knee. ‘Yeah, we are. That all right with you?’

Andromeda shrugged. ‘Doesn’t fuss me, love. Just wondering.’

Ted looked up. ‘Andy, you thinking what I’m thinking?’

Andromeda smiled at her husband. ‘Yeah, all right.’ She sucked on her joint once or twice. ‘Either of you fancy girls at all, then?’

‘Well, er....’ Remus stammered.

‘Occasionally,’ Sirius said candidly. ‘Why, you got any birds in your pocket or something?’

‘Oh, no. Just wondering,’ she said again, dreamily.

Remus began to laugh. When they asked him what was so funny, he shook his head. ‘Nothing!’ he choked out between gales.

They all laughed then. ‘Know what else isn’t funny?’ Ted said through a grin. ‘Quidditch! But the...the _word_ Quidditch _is_ funny!’ They laughed harder, and Andromeda fell off the sofa onto the floor from laughing so hard. Remus instinctively reached over to help her up, and she put her hands on his biceps to allow him to lift her. He tugged and up she came, rag-doll limp. 

‘Strong!’ she observed, giggling. But then she tipped her head to one side and kissed him, with tongue.

Ted watched, rapt, as his wife snogged another man. ‘C’mere, Sirius,’ he beckoned, holding out one hand and patting his lap with the other.

Sirius moved forward dreamily, his eyes vacant. He draped himself on the arm of Ted’s chair, and Ted stroked his thigh while speaking to him in a low voice.

‘Like watching him kiss her, do you?’ Ted asked him. ‘Like the way they close their eyes, how she presses against him. You’ve watched him before, en’t you? Watched him fuck a girl while you watched?’

Sirius nodded slowly. ‘Ever been with someone while he’s been with a girl?’ Sirius nodded again. As if the affirmative answer gave him permission, Ted coaxed him into the chair with pressure on his hip, and Sirius slid off the arm and onto Ted’s thighs. Ted untucked Sirius’s t-shirt, hands up under his jumper, and Sirius watched Andromeda do the same to Remus.

‘Andy,’ Ted called. ‘We should show these boys the toybox.’

Andromeda fished her wand off the table. ‘ _Accio toybox_ ,’ she mumbled. A second and a half later a medium-sized lacquered box hurtled into the room and skidded to a stop at Andromeda’s feet. She dislodged her lips from Remus’s ear and half-fell onto the sofa, tugging him down by his jumper. She lay back on the sofa and reached over her head to fiddle with the latch on the box.

‘Pick something,’ she told Remus.

Ted wrapped his hands around Sirius’s waist. ‘Bring something over here for us, too,’ he said. ‘Gonna have to find a place to hide that soon, Andy,’ Ted commented absently. ‘Nymphie were pulling out the manacles the other day, trying to use ‘em for bracelets.’ To Sirius he said with a steadying pat, ‘Toy roulette. You’ll love this.’

Remus sank to his knees and sifted through the contents of the box. He pulled out two small red balls and set them on the table. Andromeda sighed contentedly. Then Remus dug further and took out a luridly coloured condom packet.

‘Give us the tickler,’ Ted said, holding out his hand for the condom. ‘Andy will show you what to do with those,’ he continued with a gesture toward the balls.

‘Oh, yeah,’ she said, pulling off her capris. ‘Come here, lover-boy.’ 

Remus crawled back to her after tossing the purple packet to Ted. He picked up the balls off the table and held them in the palm of his hand. ‘Okay, so what are they?’ he asked.

‘First, put your fingers inside me,’ Andromeda told him. ‘And get me all wet.’

Remus was thankful that his senses were still a bit fogged. He took another drag, for luck, then pushed away his apprehension and ran his hand up her inner thigh. She cooed appreciatively and guided him to touch her. As he probed, he dimly marvelled at how similar, yet how different she was from Lily.

‘That’s good,’ she told him, pulling his fingers in and out steadily, covering them with slick goo. ‘Now, tap the balls with your wand and say, “ _Vibratum_.”’ 

Remus did so. The balls began to quiver in place slightly. ‘Put them up inside me,’ she instructed. 

Remus’s eyes popped about as far out as they could, but he struggled to hold the balls still enough to squeeze them into her hole. He could feel them take off as soon as they slipped past her labia, buzzing like tiny snitches inside her canal. Andromeda began to pump her hips quickly and soon was screaming for him to add his cock to the mix. 

Meanwhile, Remus turned and saw that Sirius was helping Ted roll the purple condom onto his considerable dick. The condom had tendrils that fluttered in the air, long and feathery like wisps of dandelion cotton. Once Ted’s cock was fully encased in the bright purple rubber, Ted unfastened Sirius’s trousers and eased them down his legs. ‘It self-lubes,’ he explained, ‘but why don’t you give it a kick-start, hm?’

Sirius ran a finger along the feathers. ‘Wow,’ he said, holding up a finger-tip now wet with slippery stuff. He shucked off his shorts and positioned himself over Ted’s lap, then wrapped his hand around Ted’s length and pumped a few times. He wiped himself wet and probed his own arse a few times before lowering himself slowly onto the purple-cased prick. ‘Oh my god,’ he breathed as the condom slicked, tickled, and stimulated him. ‘Shit, Remus, you’ve got to try this!’

‘Go on,’ Andromeda said, sitting up on the sofa and reaching into the box. She pulled out a large vibrator and another purple condom. ‘I don’t mind.’

Ted took turns with both Remus and Sirius while Andromeda fucked herself with the dildo and said encouraging, dirty things to them. Then, after the rest of their joints and a rather awful pizza delivery, Andromeda said: ‘Ever share a man together, then? At the same time?’

‘Andy, don’t scare them,’ Ted said, eyes twinkling. ‘But you two do make a promising lineup.’ He licked his lips. ‘Andy sometimes uses that on me,’ he said, pointing to the vibrator. ‘She fancies watching me take it from some young buck.’

‘Well, we have two here, don’t we?’ she told him, and Remus and Sirius locked eyes. 

‘Okay,’ they said as one.

TBC....


	14. In which Andromeda and Ted continue to play host

Ted guided Sirius to stand and pushed the coffee table aside. He fished out two more condoms from the box and handed one to each young wizard. ‘Put them on each other,’ he invited them, his cherub-like face belying the devilish glint in his bedroom eyes.

Remus looked to Sirius to make the first move. These were, after all, his cousin and cousin-in-law. It was one thing to agree to the idea, but now that they were making good, it felt less like a dare than a crossroads. 

Sirius, eyes overbright from the pot, took Remus’s hand and stood in front of him. He kissed Remus tenderly and cupped his cheek with his other hand. ‘All right, puppy?’ he asked. 

Even through the hazy slowness of the drugs, despite the thickness of Sirius’s voice, Remus knew Sirius was asking more than one question.

Remus tore his gaze away from Sirius’s deep blue eyes and looked over at Andromeda, sitting spread-legged on the sofa with her animated vaginal balls still whirring inside her gently, nodding and smiling at them. He glanced at Ted, pants around his ankles, holding his balls and rubbing himself to rekindle his erection for a third time that night. His eyes came home to Sirius, and he saw reflected there the spark he had seen so many times before. ‘I won’t hurt you,’ it said. ‘Never want to lose you.’ But underneath was the adventurous spirit, the daring, impetuous, rash _mischief_ that was Sirius. Pushing the limits was like breathing for him. And that, too, was what made him so heart-breakingly beautiful to Remus.

‘All right, puppy,’ Remus responded, kissing his mate again. He felt the wolf surge at the reaffirmation, the claiming way he clamped onto Sirius’s mouth. Sirius moaned into his open mouth and Andromeda gasped appreciatively behind them.

They went to work, easing two fresh condoms onto each other’s cocks. Remus wound up with another purple one with the ticklish filaments, but Sirius’s was different - it was lime green and ribbed. Ted perked up watching them handle each other and Andromeda slid to the floor beside him, preparing him a bit with her hands and tongue.

‘Remus, you’ve got the purple one, so you first,’ Ted told him. ‘Come here; this’ll be easier on the floor.’ Ted rolled onto his side, pointing behind himself. ‘Use just the head first,’ he said. ‘Short strokes to activate the lubrication charm. Then you can go deeper.’

Remus crawled over and lay on his side. Andromeda went back to the couch as Ted lifted his top leg amazingly high (‘Yoga,’ he said with a shrug) to give Remus better access. He spread his cheeks apart for him as well. Remus looked up at Sirius, who came over to kneel over them both. He nodded to Remus.

Ted’s hole was pink and puckered and perfect. Remus positioned his prick awkwardly, unused to the sideways angle. He held his cock at the right height and pushed against Ted’s anus. The contact of the condom tip against muscle instantly produced slickness there. Bit by bit, thrust by short thrust, Remus worked his prick inside.

‘Oh, wow!’ he gasped as the spell took full effect. He had thought the tickler only caused sensation for the receiver. But once activated, he felt a thousand tiny tendrils massage his dick at every pore, brushing the sensitive skin like fine mist over suede.

Ted chuckled through heavy breaths. ‘First time with one of those?’ he asked. ‘Yeah, it’s quite the experience, innit?’ He pumped his hips against Remus, impaling himself further. ‘Fuck hard, baby,’ he implored. ‘Really jam me up.’

Remus found a rhythm and worked Ted relentlessly, encouraged by Ted’s joyous cries of ‘Yes!’ and ‘That’s it!’ and ‘Fuckfuckfuck!’ Ted lowered his leg to squeeze his buttocks around Remus. He struck out with his now-free hand to touch Sirius’s protruding cock. ‘Now, you, come here to my face,’ he told the black-haired youth. ‘Give us--oh, yes!--a taste, here.’ He pulled Sirius’s lime-green sheathed prick to his mouth. Sirius had to put his hands down on the floor over Ted’s head for balance, and he took advantage of the proximity to kiss Remus’s searching mouth. Then Ted began to lick him and he sucked Remus’s tongue in reaction. His prick suddenly felt all tingly.

‘Ted, what’s the charm on this one?’ he asked, realizing he probably should have done so before putting it on.

Ted came up for air. ‘Engorgement. But don’t worry, it won’t take full effect right away.’ He squeezed Sirius’s penis to gauge the progress.

Sirius hissed. ‘Tingles...burns a bit,’ he commented.

‘Better hurry, then,’ Ted said, business-like. ‘Lie down facing me. Enjoying the show, love?’ he asked his wife.

‘Ab-so-lutely,’ she said, reaching for her drink and her vibrator. ‘You three are just beautiful together. Really, really lovely.’

Sirius suppressed a sudden realisation that this assessment came from his own cousin. Ted, on the other hand, was no blood relation at all, and he was currently making Sirius throb with the need to see the experiment through to the finish. He shoved his bottom leg between Ted’s knees and pushed himself forward. ‘Remus, help,’ he requested, unable to find the necessary angle.

Ted wrapped him in his arms and hooked his knee around Sirius’s hip. He pulled him closer. ‘Forward a bit,’ he coached.

Between Remus’s hand and Ted’s contortions (‘Yoga, I tell you!’ he reminded them), at last Sirius was able to push the head of his prick into Ted and found it standing alongside Remus’s length. It was utterly unlike any sensation he had ever felt. The spell thickened him, lengthened him, and between that and the tightness of Ted’s burning arse alone he felt he would implode. The addition of the tickling tendrils and constant rubbing up against Remus, _his_ Remus, and Sirius thought he might just die from over-stimulation and happiness.

Remus lifted himself onto his elbow and propped his head on his open palm. He could see Sirius’s head press against Ted’s chest, black hair all that showed from above, saw his legs twined between Ted’s legs. He could feel those legs resting against his own. Sirius’s ankle brushed his, but interrupted; Sirius’s hands reached through Ted’s arms for his waist and stroked, but it was Ted’s back and buttocks against his body, not Sirius’s. And oh, sweet gods, the feel of Sirius’s swollen and engorged disk thrusting, bucking against and along and in tandem with and squeezing him up against Ted’s prostate. He could scarcely hang on, willing himself to hold back, to prolong the experience. 

But Ted writhed between them and they both tipped over the edge in mere seconds after Sirius’s entry. Less than two minutes later, they both climaxed.

‘Don’t pull out!’ Ted demanded. ‘Stay inside a little longer. Gods, you two….’

Andromeda held up her wand. ‘Should I cast a mandatory erection spell, darling?’

‘No, no.’ Ted waved a boneless hand at her. ‘I just…it’s not every day we find two bucks…just want to feel them in me a little longer….’

Remus reached past Ted to pet Sirius’s shining head. ‘All right, Sirius?’ he said softly. His climax had utterly driven away the last vestiges of his high.

Sirius looked up, eyes still a bit dilated. ‘Never better, puppy,’ he answered.

They held hands on either side of Ted for a few moments longer, occasionally twitching back or forth, more to feel each other than for Ted, though he did not object. The clock in the kitchen bonged slowly until it struck twelve. Andromeda sighed.

As if the hour were a signal, all three men stirred. They separated and sat up gingerly, investigating a few odd rug burns and stretching muscles held tense. Andromeda began picking up the cartons of food off the coffee table, stuffing condom wrappers and their used contents into the empties. Everyone took a turn in the bathroom to clean up.

Remus came out of the bath last and took Sirius’s arm. ‘Well, we should probably….’ He said, looking at Sirius meaningfully.

‘Yeah, you must be nackered, travelling here and barely had a moment to rest,’ Sirius picked up on the message admirably.

‘Why don’t you stay the night – it’s a madhouse out there,’ Ted suggested, coming away from the window where he had been looking through the curtains. ‘Drunks and all.’ His tone was incongruously paternal after their recent activity.

‘Nah, we’ll be all right,’ Sirius said, hands stuffed in his pockets. ‘Uh…thanks for, um…. Thanks.’ He held out his hand. Ted shook it.

‘Anytime,’ he said with a wide grin.

‘Yes, thanks,’ Remus said politely to them both. ‘Nice…meeting you.’ 

‘Give us a ring over the summer, Sirius, once you’re both back in London,’ Andromeda said brightly, for all the world as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. ‘We can bring Dora ’round and have a picnic in the park, and all.’

Both boys made more excuses and said more awkward good-byes at the door and stumbled onto the street.

‘That was….’ Remus said, searching for words.

‘Yeah.’ Sirius agreed, equally speechless. He stretched, looking around at people still celebrating the new year. ‘I’ve never tried pot before.’

They both began to laugh, then catching each other’s eye, they hugged fiercely.

TBC….


	15. In which Lily tries something new

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirror, Mirror, on the wall....

Three days later, they boarded the train to return to Hogwarts and met up with the gang again. Peter showed them a few books he had smuggled home after a visit to a Muggle bookshop. James and Lily had evidently had a terrible Christmas, about which Lily would only say, ‘Petunia’s a cow.’ James had choicer words.

‘But let’s move on to more pleasant things,’ he said with false brightness. ‘Sirius, how do you like single living?’

‘Hate it. Had to get Remus to run away and join me.’

Lily caught Remus’s eye. ‘How’s your mum, then?’ she asked sensitively.

‘Dying, thanks,’ Remus answered with a grimace. ‘But she wanted me to go have fun. They won’t go to an oncologist,’ he said grimly.

‘A what?’ Peter asked.

‘A Muggle specialist,’ Lily supplied. She and Remus talked in low voices about their sober topic while the others, after expressing appropriate sympathy, soon lost the conversation completely and moved on.

‘Really like another language sometimes, innit?’ Peter asked Sirius and James with a shrug. 

‘Yeah. Let’s see those books.’

When they reached Hogwarts and climbed up to Gryffindor Tower, Peter checked the potion straight off. ‘I left a sign on it,’ he explained, ‘and I bribed the elves to stir it every couple days while we were gone. Looks perfect.’ Everyone accepted his judgement: Peter’s best subjects were Charms, Care of Magical Creatures, and Potions.

The term began as if the one before it had never ended. NEWTs became a constant refrain of every teacher, but James and Peter could be counted on for their single-mindedness about their project, almost as much as Sirius.

‘Potion’s almost ready,’ Peter reported about a week into term. ‘Remus, we’ll need some of your hair or something when it’s time.’

‘When do you reckon?’ James asked him.

Peter worried his bottom lip with his teeth. ‘Well before the next full moon, certainly. The potion might not work properly if it’s too close. Say, maybe Friday?’

‘Okay,’ Remus said. ‘Who’s going to take it?’

‘Ooh, let me?’ Lily asked. ‘I’ve always wondered what it’s like to have a set.’

‘You are a sick little girl,’ James told her.

She giggled. ‘And that’s how you like it.’

 

‘Now look, Remus. Look carefully, when she takes it,’ Sirius told him. ‘I think you’ll finally see what we all see.’

They trooped out to the common room, leaving Remus alone with Lily and a glass of sludgy liquid. She sprinkled a clipping of Remus’s hair into it and it stirred itself, turning a sort of goldish-grey. ‘Bottom’s up,’ she toasted, and forced the drink down. ‘Blech,’ she had time to say before clutching her stomach and falling to her knees. Remus rushed forward to see if she were all right. Lily flung out a hand. ‘I’m okay—god! Ow!’ She gasped and Remus saw her fingernails contract even as her hands widened and lengthened. Her hair receded to shoulder length and darkened from red to brown, then lightened in places to copy Remus’s highlights. Her chest flattened, her legs grew, and her face rearranged itself into Remus’s bland-but-pleasant one: a long nose, hazel eyes under a high forehead, wide cheek bones and a slightly elongated jaw, a dimpled chin, and the bashful, boyish charm that didn’t rest in a single feature, but shone only as a reflection of the whole. Watching the transition, Remus thought it was not entirely unlike a werewolf transformation, though of course, he had never observed one properly. It certainly looked like this hurt less, though that wasn’t hard.

Eventually, her spasms subsided and she stood up, looking at her unfamiliar arms and feet.

‘How do I look?’ she asked. Her voice was a tiny bit deeper, but it was not Lily’s. It was somewhere between Lily’s and Remus’s voice. It was decidedly strange to hear someone else’s voice coming out of a body that looked like his twin.

‘Check yourself in the mirror,’ Remus suggested, indicating the floor-length standing mirror in the curve behind the door. 

Lily-Remus walked barefoot over to the mirror. Her robes were only a bit too short, hitting her legs just above her ankles, and her sleeves had retracted almost to her elbows, but at least she had had the presence of mind to remove her shoes before she drank. She came to the mirror and touched her hair, her face, and then in one swift motion, she pulled her robes off over her head.

‘Your legs are a bit longer than mine,’ she said, still in that in-between voice. ‘But my waist was longer. We’re about the same height otherwise.’ Lily-Remus reached across her thin chest and touched the white scar, on the left shoulder where the werewolf had left its mark. ‘I can’t feel it,’ she said. ‘Only with my fingers. Does it feel different to you? I always imagined it would be more sensitive.’

‘It’s a tiny bit more sensitive,’ Remus answered. He came up behind his doppelganger. ‘But not by a lot. Depends on the phase.’ He looked first at the sight of his body in the mirror, perhaps the most familiar view available. There was the scar, the ripple along his hip where his skin had stretched one summer during a growth spurt, the crease between waist and pectoral muscle. It was decidedly odd to see his dick on someone else. Next he stepped back and examined himself from behind. How often did one get the chance to look at one’s arse and back full-on? He tried not to think of it as his, to see from someone else’s perspective. 

His back was straight and his shoulders were broader than he imagined them. He had never realised how long the back of his neck was, or what that birthmark looked like. Sweeping down to his waist, now, he noted the slender curve over the hip, straighter than Lily’s own, but more defined than Sirius, who was almost triangular. Remus had a waist, and his arse was… _pinchable_. Just looking at the way the cheeks dimpled and cupped under to connect in a graceful arc to his thighs…and wow. What thighs. His legs were not as hairy as one might expect of a werewolf, but the backs of his thighs were covered in slightly darker hair, almost as dark as his pubes. His thighs were slim but powerful, lean muscle resting just under the skin, no fat to make them jiggle or flab. He had never noticed before that the hollows of his knees were so attractive. Ankles and feet were familiar territory, so he came ’round to the side and touched Lily on her – his – arm to ask her to turn toward him.

Here was the ultimate test. Instead of the mirror-reflection he was used to, he now looked upon his form as _others_ saw it. Well, it was all backward, of course; he expected that. The silver-white corded skin of his scar, which he was so accustomed to seeing on his left-hand side, where it belonged, was now on his right. He knew his left – no right – eye was slightly smaller than the other, and he was only mildly surprised to have to adjust to seeing his right nipple be the one that was just a bit higher and more to the outside than the left. The region of his pelvis was still weird to look at. He reached up a timid hand and ever so gently brushed his fingertips over the twin scar.

‘It’s…the skin is soft,’ he said.

‘Well, yours is too,’ Lily-Remus commented. The voice that was not quite his voice brought him back to his senses. 

‘Yeah, but…I’m so used to feeling it on the inside that I don’t notice how it feels on the outside.’

Lily-Remus nodded. Remus continued his exploration, finding that now that he had touched “his” skin, he wanted to stay in contact. He ran his fingers down the outer edge of “his” arm, watching with interest as Lily-Remus’s flesh went goose-pimply. Lily-Remus brought up her hand and mirrored the motion, smiling.

Oh. My. God. Remus thought. He’d never seen himself smile. Not like that. Sirius had once said that Remus was the most desirable bloke there ever was, and for the first time ever, Remus could understand why Sirius might think it. He never had any illusions about being handsome – not like Sirius, the young Adonis – but he also knew he wasn’t bad-looking. The smile changed everything. At his reaction, Lily-Remus had smiled even wider, and now there was also a glowing light in the eyes…eyes that seemed to capture and refract and send that light back out again. Gods. He had had no idea.

‘I…. This might sound weird, Lil, but can you…can you look at me the way I look at Sirius?’

Lily-Remus laughed. ‘Sure, I think. Hang on….’ She screwed up his face in concentration, searching, no doubt, for an image to recreate. Remus was gratified to see that this wasn’t sexy at all, merely as doltish as he figured he looked at such times, when Lily seemed to find what she wanted, for she lowered his head just a hair and smirked at just the corner of his mouth. It was an expression that stood altogether between amusement and the beginnings of a kiss, and damn, it was attractive, he had to admit. 

But what Remus really wanted to see was his eyes. He had never been able to truly look at his own eyes, of course, because the moment he tried, his pupils adjusted and refocused on just the dot of iris, or the corner near the tear duct, or the lashes, and it was impossible to get a proper sense of the whole. But with the potion, he could look into a face that was – and yet was not – his own. What he saw made him weak and strong, scared and excited, happy and sad, territorial and submissive, possessive and free, and most of all, aroused, all at once. It was that predatory look, the one even Samantha Montgomery had noticed on his face from time to time. It was a tiny part of the wolf, peeking out of Remus’s eyes to reveal a subsection of his soul.

‘Does it sound too crazy if I say I want to kiss you right now?’ he asked, his voice catching in his throat and making him sound hoarse.

‘I think…it would sound crazy if you didn’t kiss me, right now,’ Lily-Remus said in that voice that was not quite either of their voices.

Remus crashed into himself and grabbed Lily-Remus’s lips with his own. Aside from tilting his head to avoid the nose, they needed no other adjustment – they were, after all, exactly the same height. Remus drew his hands slowly down Lily-Remus’s back, shuddering in response when Lily-Remus did the same to him, and squeezed his buttocks lovingly. 

‘Bet you never knew you were half so hot, did you?’ she asked with laughter behind the words.

Remus shook his head, too overcome to speak. He hugged his doppelganger, feeling the familiar yet unfamiliar pressure of his own cock and balls against…his own cock and balls. It was too weird. He simply had to think of this as some other person – not Lily, because Lily’s bush and breasts were far too beautiful to ignore – and not himself, because that still frightened him just a little bit. Exhilarated, too, but on the whole it was just a bit too warped. 

Particularly when the one that was not attached to him grew to fullness. ‘Remus,’ Lily-Remus said, ‘Haven’t you ever wondered what…you feel like? What it’s like to feel you, inside of you?’

‘Oh my god…’ Remus gibbered. ‘Okay, yes, yes, but we have to hurry. You’ve only got…maybe forty minutes. Jesus…. And Lil? Don’t take this the wrong way, but…gods, this is weird. Your voice….’

‘Do you want your voice?’ Lily-Remus asked, in perfect imitation of Remus’s natural sound, ‘Or mine?’ she raised her timbre, but it came out like a falsetto.

‘Er…neither, really,’ Remus told her. ‘Just…don’t talk,’ he requested, and to mitigate the imposition he began to kiss her – his – neck all over, just the way he knew Lily like it. Himself, too, come to think of it.

He led Lily-Remus backward to the bed, his own bed, and evidently she understood his wishes because she said nothing. Lily-Remus stroked her penis experimentally, and aside from a hiss or a sigh of surprise or contentment, she did not speak. That did not stop her from acting, however. She began to masturbate wantonly, clearly enjoying the feeling of touching Remus the way he would touch himself. She perked up her nipples and then clamped her arms around his neck, drawing him down to suckle.

Remus dipped his head willingly, forcing aside the continual stream of thoughts about how strange this all was. He concentrated hard and looked down at Lily-Remus’s apparatus. And suddenly…it was just a penis. Anyone’s penis. Anyone’s hard, red, slightly wet…. He bent his head down further and kissed the slit, then the seam around the head, and before he thought too hard about what he was doing, he wrapped his mouth around it.

Lily-Remus whimpered with the effort not to scream in pleasure. Remus licked and sucked, ignoring his own erection for the moment in favour of his other erection, and when he had tasted his own pre-come and looked between his legs as another would do, saw the pink ring of muscle and the hair surrounding it like the fine, soft hair underneath a dog’s tail, he looked up. ‘I’ve changed my mind. The voice doesn’t bother me. This is weird for you, too, I guess, so…go ahead. Tell me what you’re feeling.’

‘I want to fuck you, Remus. I really, really want to know what it’s like to fuck,’ Lily-Remus said immediately.

‘Okay,’ Remus told her. They changed positions and Remus dug in his bedside drawer for the lube, handing it to his twin as he knelt down on knees and elbows. ‘Get me stretched out first,’ he said, ‘so that you don’t meet a lot of resistance when you push in.’

‘Right,’ Lily-Remus said, squeezing the tube’s contents into her/his hand. She slicked up her fingers and wiped the excess on her cock, then began by spreading some goop onto the edge of his anus. She worked efficiently, but thoroughly, and before five minutes had passed she had two fingers going.

‘Add a third,’ Remus coached. ‘You can speed up a bit.’

He felt the bed creak as Lily-Remus nodded behind him, then the tension of a third finger wriggling up into his hole. The fingers twisted and pushed in all directions for a minute or two, exploring the new territory, and then they slid almost – but not quite – entirely away. 

‘I’m going to use my hand as a guide – is that okay?’ Lily-Remus asked.

‘Yes, yes, yes, just do it,’ Remus wailed, past caring.

‘Oh. Oh, wow,’ Lily-Remus said as the head of her prick made contact with the stretched muscle. ‘Wow. This is….’ She thrust slowly, very tentatively.

‘Harder,’ Remus choked, head on his forearms. ‘You’re not going to break, just push.’

‘Actually, I’ve heard that it can happen,’ Lily-Remus said with a more forceful thrust, ‘but anyway I’ve only got—Oh! Oh, oh, oh, oh…wow! Jeez-louisa, I—oh—I think—I—know—why—you—guys—are—always—obsessed—with—sex!’ she panted out her words on each thrust. 

Remus simply clamped his eyes shut and moaned, ‘Ohgodohgodohgod,’ until he thought he would pass out. The feeling of his own shape inside him, the slap of “his” chest against his back, the fervent scrape of “his” nails and fingers against his own, real, cock, was so strange, but so good, almost overpoweringly good. 

Lily-Remus pounded progressively harder, clearly really enjoying the experience. ‘I think—I’m gonna—Oh, WOW! Damn!’ she yelled, and Remus felt the warm liquid rush out of his duplicate, felt the semen trickle down between flesh and tissue, felt his own erection respond and gush. He fell to the bedspread over the wetness, too tired and overwhelmed and mind-blown to care. Lily-Remus pulled out and crawled to face him.

‘Thank you so, _so_ much,’ she said, kissing him with his own lips.

‘What do you mean?’ Remus panted. ‘Thank _you_. I…never knew….’

‘No, I know you didn’t. But now you understand, don’t you?’ His twin told him.

‘Mm.’ The thought of twins made him remember something Gideon had said, that night on the Astronomy Tower. ‘I think so. I still think it’s weird.’

‘It’s definitely weird,’ Lily-Remus agreed. ‘But what a rush.’

‘You think most twins feel like that about each other?’ he asked sleepily.

Lily-Remus took a moment to respond. ‘I…I don’t think so. Twins look the same, but they’re still two different people, aren’t they? And even though I _look_ like you right now, I’m not _really_ just like you. It’s just an illusion.’

‘Pretty darn potent illusion.’

‘Why do you think it’s such a dangerous potion?’ Lily-Remus asked. ‘Speaking of which…I think we’re about out of—time!’ She clutched her stomach again and writhed over the surface of the bed, kicking as the transformation took hold of her once more. Remus held her while she rode it out, avoiding the odd punching limb adroitly.

‘You okay?’ he asked when her spasms subsided. She was Lily again, beautiful as ever.

‘I’m just great,’ she said. ‘Only cold.’

‘I wonder if it’s true,’ Remus mused while he accio’d the cover off Sirius’s bed.

‘What?’

‘That the best sex you’ll ever have is with yourself.’ 

TBC….


	16. In which Remus gets interrupted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coitus Interruptus. It’s the worst feeling.

There were times in a young man’s life when he just wanted to be alone. Remus was having such a day, but he couldn’t grab a moment to himself without _something_ coming along to force him to socialise, to pull him away, or to simply interrupt him.

‘Should have skived off,’ he thought during Arithmancy. Professor Vector had evidently decided today was the day to make sure Remus was fully prepared for his NEWT, and it seemed she directed every third question to him. Of course, there were only eight students in the Advanced Arithmancy class, so that wasn’t too surprising.

For one thing, snow had settled over Hogwarts in great drifts. Outdoor classes had been moved inside for the last two weeks and the Quidditch teams were barred from practising. Most of the students were just as happy to escape the biting winds, the icy walkways, and the wet, sloppy mess clinging to cloaks and boots. But it was less than a week before the full moon, and Remus had cabin fever.

He couldn’t face the idea of lunch in the Great Hall, so he headed for the library. Madam Pince eyed him suspiciously when he entered, but seeing him alone, she returned to her ledgers. A small knot of fifth-years were sitting in the area by the fire, so Remus wandered the stacks aimlessly. As he walked through the fifth row of books, Panacea Marchpane found him and wanted to ask if he would switch proctoring duties with her. Remus pulled out his diary. They put their heads together and found a time to swap, and Remus noted it and excused himself politely. He moved on.

Back by the entrance to the Restricted Section, a couple were snogging on a window seat. Remus debated for a moment, but then sighed and broke them up, taking five points apiece for the public display. He wandered away.

He avoided the common room and dormitory for obvious reasons. He stalked the corridors, casting about for someplace to _be_. After too short a time, the bell rang. Remus faced a moment where he could go to class or not. Had it not been McGonagall’s he might have made good on his earlier threat. But it was Transfiguration, and McGonagall was Head of his House. Sighing, he forced himself down the staircase to his lesson.

Class was torture. Even James and Sirius could not keep Remus from fidgeting. Rather than steady him, as they usually did by making him feel _someone_ should be the responsible one, their presence felt oppressive. He wanted to push everyone away. He knew it was the wolf rebelling against even the illusion of a cage. That didn’t make the urge any less palpable.

As soon as class ended, he shrugged his friends off and ran upstairs to the dormitory, threw his bag in the room and went to the bathroom for his shower kit. Perhaps a soak in the Prefect’s Bathroom would calm him down. He closed his eyes, already imagining the fragrant bubbles and the soothing, deep tub, the cool tile floor and the faint echo that signified solitude in a place where such privacy was rare. Yes, that was what he needed. He grabbed a fresh change of clothes and made his way down to the common room.

‘Remus!’ Frank Longbottom called him. ‘Could I ask you a question?’

‘Sure, Frank,’ Remus said, turning around with his usual benign smile. 

The single question turned into half an hour’s tutoring on counter-curses. Frank was appreciative and pleasant and good-natured and utterly hopeless, but at last he beamed up at Remus with comprehension. ‘Thanks so much, Remus. I’m pretty sure I’ve got it now. Sorry I held you up, really.’

‘It’s okay. I had nowhere in particular to go.’ Remus lied. By now, it was suppertime, and since he had skipped lunch, he was really very hungry. He still couldn’t stand the thought of a common meal, but he couldn’t very well sneak down to the kitchens at peak time. He went back upstairs and stuffed his kit into his bag, then followed a straggling line of students to the Great Hall.

‘That slimy pissant little git!’ Sirius growled as he slammed into the seat next to Remus. ‘Remus, do you have any idea—’

‘No, Sirius, and I don’t care. Professor Dumbledore told you over a year ago - almost two years ago - that if we picked any more fights with Snape, you’d be through,’ he answered without looking up.

‘I’ve only got ‘til June,’ Sirius grumbled.

‘Exactly, so you should be able to—’

‘—He had my brother—my own brother!—turn all my books blank. Every single one!’ Sirius held up a token. His Transfiguration textbook was utterly white inside. ‘How am I going to do our assignment for next week, then?’

Remus sighed. ‘It’s probably just an invisibility spell, Sirius,’ he tried to placate him.

‘I tried that!’ Sirius shouted over the din. ‘Don’t you think I tried that?’

‘Don’t get angry with _me_ Sirius; just borrow someone’s. It’ll wear off, whatever it is.’

Sirius fumed over his pork pie, ‘Doesn’t even count against Snivellus, because darling ickle _Reggie_ did it.’ When Remus did not respond except to grunt noncommittally, Sirius frowned at him. ‘You all right? You’ve been off all day.’

‘Oh, very nice,’ Remus quipped. ‘When it’s just me being out of sorts, you don’t say a word. But fail to sympathise with you over a minor inconvenience, and suddenly you’re concerned?’ Remus stood up. ‘Piss off, Sirius.’ He stormed away from the table, heading for the bathroom.

Two steps out of the Hall, he regretted snapping, but he did not turn back. Sirius would understand that he just needed space. And anyway, they would patch it up before long – they always did. But it was proof that he _needed_ to relax a bit. He climbed the staircase and followed the twisting, turning corridors until he reached the Prefect’s Bathroom.

Everyone was still at dinner; the room was completely devoid of people. Even the mermaid in the portrait was asleep. It was bliss. Remus wasted not a minute turning on his favourite taps, adding the ones with chamomile and lavender-scented bubbles to calm his frayed nerves. He laid out his things while he waited for the tub to fill. It was soothing already, to hear the gush of water into the tub echo softly off the cavernous walls. For such a large tub, it filled awfully quickly, and Remus grabbed a fluffy towel and placed it nearby before easing himself into the hot water.

‘Oh, heaven,’ he thought, breathing the steam and luxuriating as the warmth seared right through his skin and into his muscle, into his bone. He swam across and turned off all but one of the taps to keep the bubbles from getting out of hand, then floated on the tiny waves for a moment before ducking back under the water to swim back to his kit. He washed his hair, shaved, and scrubbed himself thoroughly within mere minutes and allowed himself to lie back against the edge of the pool and just…be.

‘Loony, Loopy Lupin! Loony, Loopy Lupin!’

Remus sat up with a start at the first syllable. He jumped nearly a foot, but then remembered he was in the water and had to swim in place to avoid going under. He had been there so long, the bubbles had all but gone, though the water was still quite warm. ‘Peeves!’ he yelled sternly. ‘What are you _doing_ here?’

‘A better question might be, what is _you_ doing here, Loony Lupin?’ Peeves asked, somersaulting almost to the surface of the water and breathing garlicky odor in Lupin’s face.

‘I’m taking a bath, what does it look like?’ Lupin said calmly. He showed no reaction to Peeves’s rancid breath; he had learned during their first year that the best way to deal with the poltergeist was to ignore his attempts to rile.

Peeves peered into the water. ‘Looks like something else to me!’ he cackled, and Remus tried to cross his arms over the view. He couldn’t cover up and tread water at the same time, though, so he kicked back to the ledge where he had been sitting. 

‘Jealous, Peeves?’ he asked as mildly as he could given his embarrassment.

Peeves pealed with laughter. ‘Lupin’s got a secret,’ he sang tauntingly. ‘And it’s not that he’s a w—’

‘Leave him alone!’ the mermaid had woken up. ‘Leave him be! Or I’ll tell Mr Filch you’ve been hanging about, waiting again.’

Remus glanced up at the mermaid. How long had she been awake? Probably when Peeves started yelling, he decided.

‘Waiting for what?’ he asked her. She winked at him merrily.

‘You’re no fun at all,’ Peeves told her. He produced a slingshot from his back pocket and loaded it with a large, fat pellet. ‘Let’s see if we can fix Lupin’s problem, ay?’ 

Remus’s eyes went wide. Was Peeves serious? He dove under and swam for the other side seconds before the pellet hurtled into the water where he had been. More to the point, where his boner had been. He broke through the surface on the other side. Peeves had turned to follow, still squealing with laughter, and he loaded another pellet.

Remus ducked under again and this time, when he reached the other side, he climbed out quickly and lunged for his wand on the bench by his dry clothes. ‘ _Extrudisio!_ ’ he yelled, pointing up where Peeves had been. But he had vanished. The spell dissipated with no target. The mermaid was peering over at him curiously. Remus blushed bright red. His cock stood fully at attention, bouncing slightly with each breath he took. Remus made a strangled noise. The mermaid flicked her tail and seemed about to say something.

‘Just don’t,’ Remus shot at her. He held up a hand, fingers pointed up and palm out, and slipped back into the water. The only thing on his mind now was to wank off his erection as fast as possible so he could clean up, dry off, get dressed, and get back to the dormitory to resolve his fight with Sirius. All he wanted to do was be where he could have a bit of a snog with his boyfriend. But he could hardly walk through the halls announcing himself with his prick! He had no choice; if he wanted to salvage this attempt at relaxation, he had to jack off.

Ignoring the mermaid’s attempt to converse, Remus sat on the ledge and cupped his balls. He stroked his cock quickly, forcefully, trying to get it over with as soon as possible. It wasn’t working – he was putting too much pressure on himself. He slowed down, closed his eyes, and thought about sex. Images passed through his mind on a continuous loop, wandering from one encounter to the next: Gideon Prewett riding a broom as the handle moved in and out of Remus’s arse; Sirius shucking his clothes in an absurd but sexy striptease; even the sound of his own voice reading Samantha’s steamy letter to _Magical Matchmakers_. Lily wearing his skin.

‘Ahem?’ said another voice above his head. This was not the mermaid’s – for one thing, it was too close to come from the wall. It wasn’t Peeves – far too polite. This was a girl’s voice. A girl? Oh…no….

Remus opened his eyes and looked into the face of Richard Turpin’s sister, Janice. She was a seventh-year, like himself, but prefect in Ravenclaw. 

‘And just what are you doing in here at this hour?’ Janice asked. Luckily, she hadn’t seemed to look under the water, yet. Remus had been so, so close….

‘I…’m taking a bath,’ Remus said reasonably. ‘Do you mind?’ He made a gesture toward the door.

‘I certainly _do_ ,’ she told him haughtily. ‘Why are you here _now_? It’s the girls’ time to use the bath.’

Remus heard, to his horror, a small chorus of voices agree with her. He craned his neck to see the four other girls with her, all in their bathrobes. He recognised Janice’s fellow prefects from seventh-year for Slytherin and Hufflepuff, and also the sixth-year Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw girls.

‘Oh,’ he said, at a loss for something appropriate to say. They seemed to expect something better than that, so, ‘I…forgot to check the rota,’ he explained by way of apology.

‘Too right you did,’ said the Slytherin prefect, Viola Pruning, in a tone of accusation.

‘Well, if you’ll clear off a minute, I’ll…I’ll get out,’ Remus said to Janice, ignoring the other girl.

Janice pressed her lips together. Before she agreed, though, the sixth-year Hufflepuff, a girl named Hyacinth Noland, shrieked and pointed. ‘Look at him! Look! Look at his…. Eeeew!’

Remus felt like he should drown himself right there. It just couldn’t get any worse, or so he thought. The girls were all shouting, screaming, or laughing at him. Janice shook her head and looked remarkably like Professor McGonagall when she told them off for pulling pranks on the other students: surprised at Remus, more than anything else, and disappointed. Hyacinth was hysterical and it was all Beatrice Branstone, Hufflepuff’s seventh-year prefect, could do to calm her down. 

How could he just get them all to clear off long enough for him to get out of their way? Every time he tried to say anything, they began yelling at him again, Janice in particular. He wished his erection would just go away, shrivel up in the water and then at least he could get out under cover of the towel that still lay nearby. But it appeared that, despite his keen embarrassment, some part of his young body responded to being naked in front of five young women, covered only by pinkish-green, soapy water.

‘Look, I’m sorry! Just…go outside, okay? I’ll leave, if you’ll just give me a minute,’ he implored Janice.

‘We’ve already seen quite enough, Remus,’ she told him. ‘I shouldn’t delay another minute if I were you.’

The girls all laughed again, and more than laughed. Was it his imagination or was Beatrice Branstone sneaking another look right at his crotch? Unbidden, Remus remembered that Bea was one of the first people to write asking for a date with Remus, and hers was one of the better ones. As if that one thought were enough to discount all that had happened between it and the image of Lily looking at him with his own eyes, he felt the sudden contraction deep in his scrotum and the pulsating release of ejaculation ripple through him. A small trail of white shot into the water. Remus splashed the edge of the pool to cover up the sudden addition of foam.

His violent splash at least made them all back up. ‘Turn around, then, at least,’ he ordered, and they all seemed to realise that he was through playing. They turned their backs and Remus scrubbed himself once for good measure, then launched out of the pool and immediately grabbed his towel. He wrapped it around his waist furtively, scooping up his shower kit, and carried everything over to the bench. Still dripping wet, he threw his robes over his head and jabbed his arms into the sleeves. He reached underneath the robes, scrubbed the towel over his butt and legs, and pulled it out. Then he stuck his legs through his underwear, grimacing at the damp.

‘Okay,’ he said, stuffing the rest into his bag for later. ‘Sorry,’ he repeated. He hoped they would be as embarrassed as he and not say anything, but he just wanted to leave as soon as possible.

‘Why are there stones at the bottom?’ Janice asked him before he could get through the door.

‘Because Hogwarts isn’t a glass house?’ Remus replied, and escaped. He had never been so grateful for empty corridors as he was on his way back to the tower.

TBC….


	17. In which Remus exchanges a Valentine

Remus had told Sirius that he now understood, but that he still felt terribly uncomfortable with the idea of anyone using Polyjuice Potion of him to have sex with someone else – especially if that person did not know it wasn’t really Remus. They still had most of a cauldron of potion, though, and Peter refused to chuck it all down the drain, after the trouble it took to make. 

Sirius came up with a use for some of it. He still wanted revenge against Snape for dispatching Regulus to erase his textbooks. A week later, they still had not reset themselves, and Sirius was driving everyone mad asking to borrow their books. Madam Pince had long ago informed him that as far as he was concerned, the entire contents of the library were to be considered “Reference Only” and she refused to let him check out even so much as a copy of _Quidditch Through the Ages_. 

‘What if one of us takes some Polyjuice of a girl Snape likes, and gives him a Valentine?’ Sirius proposed near the beginning of February. ‘He’ll think it’s real! He’ll find her later, only he’ll find the _real_ girl! Can you imagine?’

James grinned and clapped his hand on Sirius’s shoulder. ‘That’s just the thing, Padfoot,’ he said eagerly. ‘No way to pin it on us, is there? He’ll have _seen_ her with his own eyes! It’s perfect.’

‘I really think—’ Remus began, but Peter cut him off.

‘Oh, come on, Moony.’ He waved a hand impatiently. ‘Are you seriously telling me you don’t want a crack at Snape, too? Scot-free? After what he told the Slytherin Quidditch team?’

Remus looked at the three of them. ‘What? What did he tell the Quidditch team?’

Sirius squirmed in his chair a bit. ‘We didn’t want to tell you,’ he said, looking accusingly at Peter. Peter clapped his hand over his mouth. 

‘Oh, shit. I forgot, sorry,’ he said.

‘Tell me what?’ Remus asked dangerously.

‘Well…he waited until you were out of class, after the full moon,’ James said. ‘He knew you wouldn’t be there that day.’

‘Tell me,’ Remus repeated, a feeling of dread settling in his stomach. He had not told the others about his encounter in the bath just before the full moon. And one of the girls had been Snape’s counterpart in Slytherin….

‘He…he said that you were suspended for the day, because you’d been waiting for a bunch of girl prefects. He said you jumped out at them and chased them around naked.’

‘Viola Pruning confirmed it. She said she was there.’ Sirius looked ill. ‘Remus, I don’t know where they got the idea.’

‘I do,’ Remus sighed. And he told them what had happened. ‘I figured they’d be as mortified as I was,’ he finished miserably. ‘I never thought Viola was that viscious.’

‘She isn’t,’ James said with a shake of his head. ‘But put her together with Snape, Regulus, Evan and the rest of the gang….’

‘You know Snape’s been looking for ways to get to us, even though he can’t lift a finger per Dumbledore’s orders,’ Peter added. ‘Viola probably didn’t even mean for him to get involved. She just…said something where he could hear it.’

‘Yeah, or someone else in Slytherin told him.’

‘Simpler than that,’ Lily said, coming in to the dorm, ‘Viola’s dating Evan. Didn’t you know?’

‘Bugger me.’

Peter jumped to his feet. ‘Now you _have_ to want to do this!’ he entreated Remus with both hands on his arms. ‘You can’t tell me you’re going to take that kind of a rumour lying down!’

Remus sighed. ‘If anyone figures it out, we’ll all get expelled.’

‘No one’s going to know, are they?’ James said. ‘Easy as pie. We get a hair off a girl we know Snape likes, but who wouldn’t be caught dead with him – which is, well, anyone, really. One of us takes the potion, delivers the card in person, and hides out until the potion wears off. Then we just let fate take its natural course.’

‘Sounds right to me,’ Lily said. ‘I still don’t understand why you all have such a rivalry, and I don’t approve of picking on anyone,’ she explained when James gaped at her. ‘But this is just an out-and-out attempt to humiliate Remus, when he’s done nothing to deserve it. Oh, I know all about the bath. It was an honest mistake, could have happened to anyone,’ she concluded in answer to Remus’s astonished expression.

‘So, you’ll help?’ Sirius asked her tentatively.

‘No way,’ Lily said, crossing her arms. ‘I’ve taken that stuff once, and that’s quite enough. The being isn’t so bad, but the coming and going? Uh-uh.’

‘Well, you’d be turning into another girl, so it shouldn’t be so bad,’ James placated her. But Lily would not be moved.

‘I’ll do it,’ Remus said decisively.

‘You sure?’ Sirius asked. ‘I mean, it’ll be nearly the full moon again at Valentine’s.’

‘Peter, will it be safe?’ Remus asked.

‘I’ll have to check, but I think so. It’s only dangerous if someone tries to turn into _you_ too close to the full. It’s not like using a dog hair by mistake or anything.’

‘Okay. Yeah, I’m sure. I want to set him up myself.’

 

Being a girl was decidedly weird, Remus decided. Lily had done a bit of investigating and found that Felicity Munro could safely be said to be an object of Snape’s affection, and as luck would have it, Lily knew Miss Munro through the chess club. She obtained the requisite genetic material, and found Remus a girl’s uniform from the laundry. A casual conversation with Felicity yielded her shoe size: six, which was also Lily’s size, so she lent him a pair of her shoes for the occasion, among other accoutrements.

Robes weren’t all that different, he reasoned as he tried to walk in the unfamiliar Mary Janes. Air around the knees was really rather like being robed in the summer, wearing shorts underneath and nothing else. But every time he moved, he brushed against his own breasts (which were ample). He kept wanting to readjust his testes, but they weren’t there. His hands were smaller; he couldn’t hold as many books as he was used to do. Mostly it was the feeling of being smooth where he was usually bulky, and bulging where he was usually smooth, that unnerved him.

He had a little less than an hour to find Snape (somewhere Felicity would _not_ be), get him to accept the card, and get away, and most importantly, get back up to the dorm to hide until the potion wore off, without being seen on the way. He had started down in the potions dungeons, since he also knew this was near the Slytherin common room entrance, but the classrooms there were all empty, and no one seemed to be coming or going through the corridors. What if Snape were _in_ the common room? Remus worried. What if he didn’t come out at all before the hour lapsed? Forcing down panic, Remus reasoned that they could always try again later, though he agreed with Lily: he didn’t really relish the idea of transforming all over again. Wolfish transitions were bad enough.

He stood in the entrance hall, wondering whether he should go elsewhere to look, or wait there on the assumption that Snape would have to come through on his way from his common room eventually. The risk, of course, was that Snape would come along just in time for the potion to wear off. Remus clicked his tongue in impatience. He couldn’t wait. He thought about Snape’s usual haunts. The pitch was out; it was far too cold. He had tried the potions dungeon, and Snape was hardly ever to be seen in the Astronomy Tower region. He knew from Peter and Sirius that Snape did not take Divination, so he had no reason to be anywhere near Professor Palmer’s tower. Sometimes, he knew, Snape could be found hanging about the greenhouses. And there was always the library, or the small corridor behind the portrait of Fractius and Nilvus Craven, the brothers famous for inventing Wizarding Wireless, which wasn’t too far from there. He decided to check the library, since it was the least likely place the real Felicity might be.

He prowled through the stacks carefully, preferring to see Snape before Snape saw him. He took his watch out of his pocket (it was too big for Felicity’s wrist) and checked the time; he had about two-thirds of his hour left. Good. Enough time to check somewhere else before it wore off, but if the next location didn’t yield results, he’d have to abort.

He checked through the stacks on the other side before he came ’round the corner. It felt a bit like being a spy, and Remus suppressed a laugh. That reminded him, he’d better remember to imitate Felicity’s voice, though he wasn’t altogether sure Snape had ever heard her speak. And…there he was. He was sitting in the window seat, leaning against one of the columns that supported the leaded glass, his beaky nose stuck deep in a giant book. He had one foot on the seat in front of him; the other leg extended off the seat cushion. His robes were open and Remus could see the conservative—old-fashioned, even—cut of his trousers over his boots. It was possibly the most relaxed Remus had ever seen their nemesis.

‘Good,’ he thought with determination. ‘He’ll be off-guard.’ Remus looked down at his robes, making sure that his bosom still existed, and he dug the card out of the little bag Lily had lent him. He pressed forward, remembering everything he had observed about Felicity, which admittedly wasn’t much. He hoped it would fool the other boy.

‘Er…Severus?’ he asked coquettishly. He didn’t have to feign nerves, at least.

Snape’s head jerked up and he planted his feet back on the floor. Remus was reminded of a time once when Turner drove them back after a very late evening at a festival in the village. They had turned onto the long drive from the road up to the Park, and there had been a doe standing on the gravel, just beyond the gate. Rather than move out of the way, the deer had stood, transfixed in the headlamps of the old Rolls, staring back at them until Turner tooted the horn. Snape looked like he had no idea what to expect.

‘Miss…Miss Munro,’ he managed finally. His eyes were pointedly aimed underneath Remus’s face. The book lay open across his lap, and Remus reasoned that he was probably using it as a shield. 

Remus smiled, and that wasn’t fake either. ‘Felicity,’ he simpered. ‘Well, I didn’t want to interrupt, but you seemed rather…engrossed.’ He twisted his hips a bit as he’d seen her do on occasion. Snape’s eyes widened, but at least he tried to cover his reaction.

‘Oh, uh, no…I was just…reading,’ he trailed off, and his sallow skin looked faintly ruddy. Remus felt a surge of pride. Snape was blushing!

‘I see that,’ he said in his most “natural” falsetto. ‘Well, I just thought…that is, it’s nearly Valentine’s Day, and—’

Snape had snorted, his flush disappearing rapidly. ‘What of it?’ he asked darkly. He crossed his arms and leaned back again.

‘Don’t you like Valentine’s?’ Remus fought to control his laughter, but he couldn’t help having a bit of fun with this. ‘I love it. It’s so romantic, in the middle of winter and all—’

‘Did you have something to ask me?’ Snape cut him off with a sigh. 

Too far, Remus realised. He wasn’t entranced anymore, only annoyed. He turned up Felicity’s charm. ‘Actually, yes,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you felt that way, though. So maybe you don’t want this….’ He held out the card.

Snape eyed the envelope as if it might explode any moment. ‘What is it?’ he asked, not bothering to mask his suspicion.

‘It’s a Valentine’s card, silly,’ Remus said, rolling his eyes and letting his voice break. He bobbed onto his toes and then let one ankle roll forward with a shrug. ‘For you.’

Snape still didn’t touch it. He looked side to side, checking around the nearest stacks. ‘Who told you to give me that?’ he inquired. 

Interesting, Remus thought while he feigned innocence. Snape didn’t suspect _Felicity_ of playing a trick on him, so much as he seemed to believe that she was either the willing or unwitting participant in someone _else’s_ plan to prank him. Remus twisted the long, blonde hair to mimic Felicity’s nervous gesture. ‘Well, Severus, what a thing to say! No one _told_ me; in fact,’ he added for verisimilitude, ‘a few of the girls said I was probably wasting my time. But I don’t think I’m wasting my time. Do you, Severus?’ Remus leaned forward, worrying his bottom lip with the edges of his front teeth. He lowered his voice just a hair, hoping it created a seductive effect.

Whether or not it did, it seemed to work. Severus choked back what might have been a moan. He looked positively terrified for a moment. Two seconds later, he swallowed and regained his detached composure, but he held out his hand tentatively.

Remus smiled triumphantly and put the card in Snape’s hand. He even forced himself to squeeze Snape’s hand a tiny bit and brush his thumb over his wrist as he pulled away. ‘Why don’t you read that, and then come find me with your answer,’ Remus whispered in his best imitation of desire. He ducked through the stacks, turning to wave once and wink at Snape before he walked away. Two stacks down, he fled.

He made for the nearest short-cut, behind a tapestry and up a short flight with a trick stair, breathing heavily. His hand burned where he had touched Snape’s skin. Was it some property of Snape’s skin, or did he just imagine that his flesh was infected? He shook his hand out rapidly to stop it tingling. How much time did he have to get to Gryffindor? He stepped out into the corridor at the end of the stairwell, where the torches shed more light, and fished out his watch. Twenty minutes to go? That was all the time it had taken to deliver the card? Standing there, talking to Snape, had seemed like forever.

‘Felicity!’ a voice called down the hallway. ‘Hey, I’ve been looking for you,’ the voice continued.

‘Bugger,’ Remus thought. Elizabeth Stevens, of all people. Next to Samantha Montgomery, she was Felicity’s best friend. There was no way he could fool her. ‘Hi, Lizzie,’ he said, turning to smile at her. ‘Um...I really can’t chat, I’m afraid....’

Elizabeth rolled right over him as if he hadn’t said anything. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it seemed Elizabeth didn’t really expect Felicity to say anything. She launched into a lengthy and breathless explanation about an invitation she had received from Matthew Tennyson for the next Hogsmeade weekend. Remus tried several times to break away, but Elizabeth nattered on, oblivious. In desperation, Remus began walking down the corridor. How much time was left?

Elizabeth fell into step without hesitation. ‘You’re right; we should get to Defense Against the Dark Arts,’ she said, assigning a different purpose to Remus’s body language. But then she went right on with her chatter.

Remus panicked. ‘Uh... Lizzie? That’s great, really. But I have to...make a stop.’

‘Oh, me too,’ Elizabeth said immediately, leading the way to a girls’ bathroom. Remus considered lingering in the bathroom and sending Elizabeth on by herself, but the timing worried him. He went in, waited until Elizabeth selected a cubicle (still talking incessantly), and then doubled back into the corridor.

...And right into Snape.

Remus bounced off the other’s dark robes. Without thinking, he clutched his chest where they had collided. He started when he gripped soft flesh instead of the smoothness he was used to. 

Snape also took a step or two backward, but unfortunately for Remus, he looked up in time to see Felicity squeeze her breast at him. He apparently took it as a crude invitation, for without bothering to speak, he grabbed Remus’s arms above the elbows and pushed him against the wall.

Remus gasped and instinctively pushed back, but in this form, he was not naturally strong. He could not simply shrug and throw Snape off, as he could have done in his own body. He had no leverage. Even as he fought, he remembered that this Felicity was supposed to be attracted to Snape. He didn’t know what to do next.

The token rebuff only seemed to excite Snape more. He closed in, pressing the length of his body against “Felicity.” His breath wasn’t horrible, only not particularly fresh, Remus had time to notice before Snape tilted his head to one side and pressed their lips together. He ground his hips toward his quarry, trying to deepen the kiss. His nose crushed against Remus’s cheek.

Remus stood, horrified, frozen, pinned to the wall, beneath the assault. There was really no other term for it, even if his card had supposedly invited interest. Gods, Snape was disgusting. Then, most terrifying of all, he felt a tug deep in his abdomen, beneath his stomach...between his legs. Had he been in his normal body, he would have sworn it was the prelude to an erection. Impossible! He could feel Snape, hard inside his trousers, but Remus was still decidedly unadorned down there. Unless.... What time was it? he thought desperately. He had wasted at least fifteen minutes with Elizabeth, which meant the potion was probably going to run out any minute. He had to get away!

Before he could even break the kiss, the door to the girls’ room opened and Elizabeth came back out. 

‘Felicity? Where’d you disappear to--Oh, my God!’ she screeched, seeing Snape all over her friend. ‘What the hell are you doing! Get off of her, you animal!’ 

Snape backed away in alarm. ‘I...she started it!’ he pointed at Remus, for all the world as if they were six.

‘Are you mad?!’ Elizabeth scoffed, reaching for her wand. ‘Why in Merlin’s name--’

Remus felt an odd tingle all over. It was similar to the tiny warning he got when his werewolf transformation was about to overtake him. He ducked back into the girls’ room and quickly locked himself in a cubicle to let the potion wear off, leaving Snape to Elizabeth’s wrath.

A few minutes later, he heard the door swing open. ‘Felicity? He’s gone.’ Elizabeth’s feet appeared on the other side of the cubicle door. ‘He just ran away down the corridor, not so much as a word. Do you have _any_ idea what he thought he was doing?’

‘Actually, I do,’ Remus said in his own voice. He had taken off all the clothing except the outer robe, which covered everything important. The shoes were far too small and he didn’t even want to consider what to do with the bra. ‘Lizzie, you’re not going to believe this, but....’ He opened the door.

‘Oh my God!’ Elizabeth shrieked. ‘Felicity, what did he _do_ to you?’

Remus rolled his eyes. This would take some explaining.

TBC....


	18. In which Remus scares himself

He didn’t have to think twice about telling Elizabeth to tell Felicity before she was treated to a dose of Snape’s “affection.” It wasn’t only that they might tell Snape that the Marauders had planned it. Remus thought, at worst, Snape would make a fool of himself asking Felicity for a date. He never imagined Snape’s “style” would amount to attempted rape! Prank or no prank, he wouldn’t want anyone to have to endure being summarily pressed against a wall, crudely kissed and roughly molested. No one should have to feel Snape’s hard-on against one’s leg, smell his hot breath, or put up with his clumsy attempts to make love. Had he ever been that unnatural? Had Sirius? Snape had no subtlety; he was a brute. But he didn’t really deserve to be expelled for over-eagerness, especially when Remus admittedly had been winding him up.

Remus could understand why anyone with half a brain would be utterly sick at the thought of Snape in love with one. What he couldn’t understand was why on earth he might dream about Snape that night. 

It was quite the nightmare. The worst part about it wasn’t even the rape scenario. It was Remus’s reaction to it. 

It started with the same kind of encounter, only Remus was not female. He came up to Snape in the library, where he had been reading. What followed was a terse and somewhat awkward conversation about nothing, after which Remus walked away, as he had that day. And, as it had happened in reality, Snape caught him in a corridor a few minutes later. But then it diverged markedly.

Instead of colliding, Snape came up behind him and pinned his arms to his sides. His breath brushed Remus’s ear and sent shivers all the way down his spine. Remus didn’t even know what Snape said; it was the _fact_ of him that aroused. The fact that he hadn’t heard or smelled Snape coming convinced him it was a dream; even at the low point of his lunar cycle, Remus could generally never be surprised that easily.

Yet even as he thought that, the scene replayed in his sleep: He wasn’t surprised; he sensed Snape coming, and thrilled to the chase. Quickened the pace, aware that Snape was closing, coming to get him. He began to run. Snape was suddenly on his heels. Remus’s wolf-instinct leapt into control and he turned, snapping, to face his attacker.

But Snape overpowered him, the way he had overpowered him in Felicity’s shape, pounced on top of him and bowled him to the ground like he were the wolf, and Remus the smaller prey. And in the way of dreams, they were suddenly in the forest, not a Hogwarts corridor, and Remus kicked his assailant away only to be captured again. Snape caught him ’round one ankle. He dragged him backward by his leg, and then, running his hands up toward Remus’s thigh, he _climbed_ onto Remus’s body.

He covered Remus’s length with his own, and when he reached Remus’s ears, he began whispering again in that commanding, sibilant voice that made Remus turn into a puddle. It wasn’t what he said that mattered so much as the presence of that warm vibration against his skin. Snape tore his robes away brutally and before Remus could draw a preparatory breath, Snape rammed into him.

He was warm, hot even, against Remus’s back. His dick was massive, making Remus feel like his sphincter might burst, and it slammed against his prostate with every primal thrust.

Like Snape’s real attempt to snog Felicity, there was nothing about the scenario that could be construed as love-making. It was lustful, it was violent, and it was incredible. Remus thrashed in his sleep from the force of his dream. Sex was too delicate a term. Rutting about captured it.

Remus woke in a sweat, wondering if he could possibly be attracted to Snape. He didn’t want to consider it, but the wet, slightly sticky, cooling mess in his pyjama bottoms indicated at least a transitory fancy. Then another black-haired boy stirred in the bed beside him, who murmured gently and nuzzled closer to his back. Sirius. Remus turned himself over in relief, filling his nose with Sirius’s distinctive scent, a mixture of cinnamon, woodsmoke, and something bitter and citrusy that combined in Remus’s head to mean _Sirius_. He snuggled under the cover and could not help but touch Sirius to reassure himself. This was what he wanted, not that greasy, crude, incompetent Snape.

And yet, why dream about him like that? There was something about the encounter that had obviously appealed. Remus allowed his hands to wander across Sirius’s chest, his back, and kissed the tip of Sirius’s nose, then his cheek. Sirius sighed, snuggled, and muttered something unintelligible, but did not wake up.

Disappointed, Remus tried again to coax Sirius to wake. He caressed Sirius’s arse, pressed his leg to Sirius’s balls, kissed his lips gently. ‘Sirius?’ he whispered in the dark. Sirius smiled and Remus felt at least part of him wake up. ‘Sirius?’ he asked again. ‘You awake?’

‘Mwuf,’ Sirius said.

‘Sirius?’ Remus rubbed him harder. ‘Sirius, are you awake?

Sirius yawned. ‘I guess I am now,’ he said softly. ‘Ooh,’ he continued when Remus reached down and stroked him more urgently. ‘Though this is a nice way to wake up....’

Remus snorted his laughter and kissed Sirius, poking his tongue forward to open his lips. Sirius complied with pleasure. ‘I need you to....’

‘To what?’ Sirius asked, and pushed the covers down a bit. ‘To kiss you like this?’ He dipped his head to Remus’s neck.

‘Yes, but...I want you to force me. Hold me down.’

‘Er,’ Sirius rolled onto one elbow, ‘not that I object in theory, puppy, but...you’re stronger than I am.’

‘I know.’

‘So if you want to play rough....’

‘I’ll hold back. I want it rough. I want _you_ to be rough. Just for now.’

Sirius shrugged. ‘I can try,’ he said gamely. ‘Long as you promise your resistance will be token. Don’t break me.’

Remus laughed and shook his head. ‘I shan’t.’

Sirius lifted himself out of the mattress and stood up. ‘We need more room. Bath or downstairs?’ He pulled his bathrobe on and looped the belt loosely.

‘Downstairs,’ Remus said with a glance at the clock on the table. ‘Catch me,’ he challenged, then launched out of bed and ran for the door.

Sirius raced after him, ’round and ’round the turret stairwell, down toward the common room. He nearly caught Remus on the first of the dormitory floors, but Remus burst away at the last minute, just as Sirius was about to grasp his shoulder.

‘You’ll pay for that!’ Sirius half-whispered, half-yelled. The chase was a good idea. A sense of competition brought out his more predatory streak and made him just an ounce annoyed at Remus. He’d need those emotions to play out this fantasy for his partner.

They flew into the empty common room, where a banked fire was the only sign of life, and it and the faint moonlight through the windows were the only light. Remus rounded one of the sofas when Sirius entered the room. Sirius altered his trajectory and came to the opposite end of the sofa. Remus backed up and tried to run to his left. He wove between it and the study-table next to it. Sirius stepped forward and to his left, in front of the sofa. Remus jumped away, but Sirius snapped his arm out with reflexes honed from practising Quidditch with James. He caught Remus’s wrist and tugged.

Once he felt himself in Sirius’s grip, Remus did not resist. He went limp and allowed Sirius to throw him over the sofa back. He fell to the cushions and instantly felt Sirius’s weight on him.

‘Thought you could run?’ Sirius asked intensely. ‘Thought you’d get away from me?’ He planted one knee on Remus’s thigh, squeezed his wrist as he pushed it into the pillow. ‘You should know better.’

Remus’s pulse quickened, not just from the race down the stairs. _This_ was what he craved: the excitement of the hunt. His erection already strained against his pyjama bottoms, and he could smell Sirius’s desire. It was just the scenario that had enthralled him, not the identity of his attacker. It was so much better for Sirius playing that role.

He struggled ineffectually, making noise but saying nothing. Sirius shoved him into the sofa. ‘Fight all you want,’ he said menacingly, ‘you know that just makes it worse for you...and better for me.’ Sirius growled and repositioned himself, still holding Remus in place, to force Remus’s legs apart. 

Remus longed to wrap his legs around Sirius’s waist, but he desired more to play out the scene in his mind. He bucked his hips so that their dicks ground against one another, but used the motion as another attempt to throw Sirius off.

Sirius jammed his knee against Remus’s groin. ‘That’s it, slut, just fight away.’ He pushed his chest down, forced Remus’s mouth open and rammed his tongue inside. Remus stifled a shout. He twisted one arm free and beat against Sirius’s arm. Sirius caught his arm and wrestled it down, pinning it between the seat-cushion and the back of the sofa. He reached farther and yanked on Remus’s pyjama bottoms. Remus, utterly caught up in the excitement, bit Sirius’s tongue a touch too hard. He opened his mouth immediately in shock.

‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ he said quickly.

Sirius reared and cracked his hand against Remus’s jaw. ‘That was not very nice, poppet,’ he told Remus, channelling his discomfort and amusement into anger. ‘Now, hold still, and we can get on with it.’ He tugged on the cotton pyjama bottoms and worked them efficiently off Remus’s legs. ‘Or do I have to hex you to obey?’ he asked.

‘You don’t have your wand,’ Remus cracked defiantly.

‘Don’t I?’ Sirius had a mad glint in his eye. ‘Think I need a wand to hex a puny maggot like you? Half-breed scum,’ he tossed in, ‘pretending to be normal. I know what you are. This is all you deserve.’ He put one foot on the floor, forcing Remus’s leg to hang off the edge of the sofa, and he pushed his cock against Remus’s arse. It slid between him and the cushion. Sirius took Remus’s hand and stuck it between their legs. Remus grasped Sirius’s dick reflexively and guided him toward his anus. Sirius drew back. ‘Don’t even think it,’ he said dangerously. ‘Don’t you think you can control this if you co-operate.’ He drew his wand from his robe pocket and uttered a quick lubricating spell. ‘It’s not for you,’ he assured Remus. ‘I don’t really care if you get hurt, werewolf. But I value my prizes.’ He repositioned again and this time did not hesitate. He pushed forward, hard enough to drive deep in one stroke, but slow enough not to hurt too badly. Remus hissed and exhaled in a fevered rhythm, and he could not resist canting his hips to meet Sirius’s assault.

‘Yes, that’s it! Oh, yeah,’ he encouraged Sirius, forgetting the scenario. ‘Pound me, yes, yes!’

Sirius fell on top of him, exhausted not so much from the sex, but from the persona. ‘Did that help you, love?’ His voice was muffled from where his head rested against Remus’s neck. 

‘Was it difficult?’ Remus asked.

‘A little. It’s hard to pretend I want to hurt you. Did I hurt you? Can we go to bed now?’

‘Sure. No, you didn’t hurt me. Well, a little, but it was okay. You’re crushing me now, though.’ Sirius pinched him before he rose.

‘You are one perverse werewolf,’ he said as they climbed the stairs.

‘Is there any other kind?’

TBC....


	19. In which Peter intercepts a letter

Schoolwork took over for the next week or so, as if every professor in the place had decided to shake off the winter doldrums by sadistically assigning loads of homework. It was just as well, as far as Remus was concerned, because Snape had apparently tried to apologize to Felicity, who, armed with Remus’s account, had taken advantage of the situation to rebuff him on the basis of his behaviour, rather than on sensible principle. Unfortunately, she had told him this loudly, publicly, and rather carelessly, and now everyone knew he had tried to make a move with her. Everyone gave Snape a very wide berth for the days and weeks following, and any students who ran afoul of the seventh-year Slytherin prefect, even fellow Slytherins, were liable to find themselves a few points down before they could escape.

Remus picked up a few sickles tutoring the younger students, and the next full moon served to calm the worst of his restlessness. Unfortunately, the wolf had also injured himself quite severely tumbling down the mountain after a close encounter with a thestral. The others had had all they could do to get him back to the shack, and even then, they’d had to wait until morning and he resumed his human form to get him back indoors properly.

The moon also coincided with a Hogsmeade week-end, so Remus was confined to the hospital wing with his knitting bones, while everyone got a much-desired day in town. That afternoon, Peter came to him with a problem.

‘Remus, I checked the post box at the Owl Office today.’

‘I thought we took down the ads around school.’

‘We did - we’ve matched up everyone we can and it really made no sense to continue. Lily took them all down weeks ago.’

‘But then....’

‘I took some of the money we had and used it....’

‘Peter,’ Remus warned icily.

‘I ran the ad in the Prophet. Only once,’ he qualified immediately. ‘I just thought it would make things look more legitimate.’

‘Jesus, Peter,’ Remus breathed.

‘I know, it was thick,’ Peter whined. ‘But...well, we got this one owl, and I don’t know if I should show you or not.’

Remus blanched. ‘You got an owl about me? Through the Daily Prophet?’

Peter nodded, looking ill. He drew the envelope out of his robe pocket and handed it over.

Remus recognised the stationery and ink immediately. ‘You’re joking!’ he said, eyes widening.

Peter shook his head. ‘I haven’t told the others,’ he said. ‘And I stopped reading when I realised. It’s up to you if you want to read it.’ He stood up and walked away, then turned suddenly. ‘But if you do, tell us what it says?’ Then he left him alone in the hospital bed. 

 

Remus turned the letter over in his hand again and again, deciding whether or not he should open it. The very thought that Professor McGonagall should send in a letter with his name in it made him blanch. Perhaps it was innocent? Perhaps...perhaps she had guessed it was one of their schemes? He shifted on the cot painfully, cursing, not for the first time, the way that werewolves did not usually respond to ordinary magical remedies. Reasoning that his curiosity would take his mind off his itching bones, he flipped open the envelope, slid the letter out, and began to read.

_Dear Magical Matchmakers,_

_I can’t quite understand why I’m writing this. It’s the kind of thing that should probably best be kept locked in a drawer, under the stockings, as it were, but.... Dear me, here goes. Confidentiality is assured, so I see in your ad._

_I have a student...no. I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I have no intention of crossing that line inappropriately. If he were only thirty years older.... I suppose I am wondering if there could be anyone else in the world quite like him. You see, he is a werewolf. I’m not crazy, I assure you: He is perhaps the gentlest soul I have ever encountered._

_We arranged for a safe location, duly inspected by the Registry Support Services Office, for him to undergo his transformations. I mention this only because, confidentiality aside, I shouldn’t wish anyone to think we would ever endanger another student. There has been one incident, though it was clearly an accident and he had no knowledge of it beforehand. But I’ve read that Animagi can sometimes be a calming influence on a transformed werewolf. Were it not for the sanctity with which I view my position as a teacher, I should have come to him in cat-form long before now. I wish I could spare him the loneliness of his nights in transformation, but such is the boy’s lot._

_You might think that it’s no different for an Animaga to find a mate than anyone else. Well, of course, so much of my life is occupied by teaching, that’s a strike right there – who has time to look around? But it’s not just a lack of time that prevents me from finding someone to share my days. Only others who have undergone the Animagus transformation can really understand one another. There’s something primal about one’s animal form. It’s liberating. Enlightening. You have to understand this, because an Animagus knows himself in a way few wizards can claim. After observing this young man for the better part of seven years, it seems to me that perhaps, werewolves too must know themselves at a different level than others. Most would tell you that the curse does not bring with it a true totem form, and perhaps that is so. But with this boy...._

_Perhaps because he was bitten so terribly young, and yet miraculously survived. Survived and more, he has adjusted better than anyone could have imagined. A more self-possessed youngster you could not hope to find. He has a maturity well in excess of his years, and yet retains the boyish charm that endears him to nearly all around him._

_As I said, if he were only older, but that is why I rather despair to find anyone in quite his situation, so well equipped to know another who has come to terms with her animal self. The way that he responds to his curse is...well, it’s like the wolf would have been his form, had he a choice. But he’s much too young, of course. So I’m looking for someone_ like _this young man, if such a person exists. If he did, I would welcome the opportunity to meet him._

_Wizards who have not studied the totem, who have not connected in that way, usually find Animagus proclivities odd, to say the least. I’ve never met any man both so even-tempered and so necessarily aware of the primal within himself. But he keeps himself in check so obsessively, I fear that he needs someone to guide his primal urges. Under other circumstances, I would be honoured to be that person. The one who teaches him the joy of a simpler existence as an animal. We are not beasts, for we retain our identity and our intelligence. Indeed, we have to do, or we could never return from the totem form. But it is true that our animal forms are not as complex. They eat. They sleep. They chase mice. They…well, they mate. They protect their chosen companions. They make contact, often marking each other the way animals do._

_I’m most uncomfortable going into more detail, but I simply don’t know if you’d truly understand any other way. Animagi...need to be able to be with their mates, to be accepted both in their animalistic forms, as well as in our usual human shape. It’s very difficult to explain to an outsider. For example, I am a cat, and thus I would wish to be able to be with my intended as a cat._

_To demonstrate, if I were matched to a werewolf, I would remain with him during his transformation, doing what I could to keep him distracted from causing himself or others injury. We would mark each other and rub against each other’s fur. Our contact as animals would be extremely important. The communion of our totems is as intimate as any other act we could commit. Whether or not we attempted any sort of sexual union, which I doubt, considering our disparate species and sizes, we could express our mutual affection in ways that defied human description. I could knead his fur with my paws or bathe him with my tongue to the point of release._

_Once he calmed and settled for his morning transformation, I would remain in cat form. I would lick his wounds, if he lets me, and after he endured the change, I would curl up and offer him comfort with my heat and my purr. I would again mark him, under his chin, against his shoulder, leaning into his heartbeat. I would sniff his skin, and if any of his wounds had remained through the transformation, I would help them to heal with my tongue. My gentle laps would not disturb him, merely bring him a sense of peace, of companionship. Later when he woke, I could choose to remain the comfort of a pet, or transform into the competent nurse he might need. From grooming to simple contact, I would be so grateful to be able to touch someone in such a private way._

_Beyond the understanding necessary for true relations between an Animagus and any other person, I must confess that this young man is a model in other respects. He has a gentility and a sensible streak that cloaks a deeper, more mischievous spirit. He is the type of man who_ could _be cruel, but who will not be. He is slow to anger, with a healthy humour about his fate and the trials of his fellow students. He is neither too short nor too tall; neither too fair nor too dark; he is a bit too thin, but it’s his metabolism, bless the boy—he’ll never fatten up. He is extremely intelligent and if he is a bit diffident, that is only to be expected due to his circumstances. If he were older, I should ~~shag~~ kiss the diffidence out of him. Oh, dear._

_Yes. Well, someone like this young man, then. Oh, and if it’s not too much trouble, I should like someone with a really firm bottom. I do like a man whose arse is muscular. Legs, too, of course._

_I know you ensured confidentiality, but I can’t quite take that chance. I have spoken frankly about matters that could easily be misconstrued. I have therefore put a little spell on this letter, merely to assure that anyone who should read it will not disclose its contents except with the intention of fulfilling my wishes. I do assure you again that I would never, ever, let my feelings for this boy influence either my treatment of him or my behaviour in any way. Let us say that I wish to transfer the maternal instincts he elicits into something more meaningful, with someone more appropriate. I have a post box in Dundee, where you may correspond. Though I don’t suppose I’ll be hearing anything, at any rate._

_Yours very sincerely,_

_Minerva McGonagall_

 

Remus blinked at the final paragraph again. A spell? Peter said he had stopped reading. But this was Professor McGonagall. It’s quite likely that the spell had affected Peter even in the first seconds of opening the letter. Did that mean that subconsciously, Peter was trying to send Remus to the Professor? And what could Remus do about it _now_?

He folded the parchment carefully and slid it back into the envelope when Madam Pomfrey came to give him more painkilling potion. Not that it really worked. Besides, his leg wasn’t bothering him nearly as much as his head.

He must have fallen asleep, for when he woke, the hospital wing was lit by lamps instead of the weak sun filtered through glass. He heard the purring first, looked down, and saw that a tabby cat was curled up, asleep, near his foot. Not on it, but close to it, close enough to jump away as soon as he moved. Remus held himself still, wondering if the cat were really Professor McGonagall, or simply the cat of a student, and not at all magical.

The cat opened one eye and yawned. She stood, stretched, and picked her way carefully up the bed to Remus’s hand. She sniffed experimentally, and Remus held his hand still despite the tickling whiskers and the tingling of air from the cat’s breath. Then the cat pushed her head under Remus’s palm, and he stroked along her head and back. She continued her trek and curled up once more, this time in the hollow of his chest. Her body-heat and heartbeat were a comforting rhythm against him. He stroked the cat absently while he lay back on the pillow and tried to rest.

Before long his hand felt too heavy to keep petting her and he rested it on her head, where the fur was smoothest. She wriggled free and repositioned herself and Remus felt a series of rough, light swipes over his chin where the skin had been scraped in his fall. The scrape of sandpaper on his cut was a tiny bit painful, but more soothing than not. He sighed contentedly and wrapped his arm around the cat like a teddy bear. The cat went on licking. Every so often, she rubbed the top of her head against his jaw.

Remus drifted in and out of sleep. The cat stayed with him. At one point, he recalled lifting up the sheet and the cat burrowing underneath. He felt her whiskers brush along his body as she sniffed all the way down, tickling his most sensitive regions with her fur and her breath. Then she turned around and came back to lie down with her back to his chest, her chin resting on his arm and her nose poking out of the covers. He turned onto his back and she climbed up onto his abdomen, settling in a circle between his hips. Right on top of his crotch. The weight and the warmth felt natural, and as long as she didn’t start kneading or anything weird, Remus decided he didn’t mind.

He woke later, leg itching like mad, but able to bend when he tried. The cat was gone. He had no idea if he’d dreamed it, or only parts of it, but he felt as rested as he usually did when Sirius stayed with him as Padfoot. He’d had no idea there was a known benefit to being with Animagi. He’d have to tell Sirius that it wasn’t just them. He was sure that much wouldn’t interfere with the spell she had placed on the letter. He still didn’t know how to tell the others, or even if he could, or should. But he thought he could worry about that another day.

He wondered if Professor McGonagall had a name for her cat-form. He wondered if she’d ever allow herself the indulgence again. He wondered if Madam Pomfrey would ever release him from the hospital wing.

TBC….


	20. In which Bill Weasley asks for extra-curricular help

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My math is as bad as JKR's, but I wanted Bill to be available for this!

Remus limped back to the dormitory a few hours later. His leg felt more like a bad sprain now, and he could stand to put his weight on it fairly well. He didn’t particularly want to run any races, but it would be better by morning, probably.

‘How’s your leg?’ Sirius bounded up to him as soon as he came through the portrait door. He took Remus’s arm and supported him to the nearest chair.

‘I’m fine, Sirius, leave off, will you?’

‘R-remus?’ one of the younger students, a boy with very red hair and a quantity of freckles, interrupted their repartee. 

‘Yes, Mr Weasley, isn’t it?’ Remus asked. 

‘Yes,’ the boy said. ‘Bill. I’m not disturbing you, am I?’

‘Not at all, what can I do for you?’ Remus reflected that sometimes, knee-jerk politeness was less than a virtue.

‘Well, I was hoping you could find some time for me? Professor Raines assigned a whole bunch of counter-jinxes to practise and….’

‘You need help with your technique?’

‘Yeah. And memorising the spells,’ Bill told him. ‘I heard you get good marks from Raines, even though he never gives good marks to anyone,’ he continued, his last statement more bitter than the rest. ‘I’m all right in every other class. Professor Raines just doesn’t like me.’

‘Professor Raines just doesn’t like anyone, unless you’re a Slytherin,’ Remus explained. ‘And even then…. All right. How about Wednesday?’

Bill nodded, but then leaned in. ‘Only thing is, I can’t really pay you.’

Remus smiled. Gideon had told him once about his elder sister, and how none of them were left well-off when their parents had been killed by Voldemort. ‘It’s okay,’ he whispered to Bill. ‘Just don’t tell anyone what you’re paying me.’ He winked as he straightened up. ‘So, Wednesday? In the empty classroom near Professor Vector’s office?’

‘Okay,’ Bill said with a nervous laugh, and moved back to his circle of friends on the window-seat.

‘Are you still tired, puppy?’ Sirius asked eagerly. ‘Because you won’t believe what happened in Hogsmeade.’

‘Tell me upstairs,’ Remus answered. He leaned on Sirius’s arm to pull himself out of the chair and defiantly walked up the turret stairs under his own steam, limping as unobtrusively as possible.

‘Well, first, Peter wants to set up another shoot for Friday. We’ve still got Somnophilia and Menage-a-trois to set up. That okay?’

‘I suppose…you, me, and Lily?’

‘Yeah, with faces hidden.’

‘Right.’ He settled on his bed and kicked off his shoes. ‘So what happened in Hogsmeade?’

‘Oh, just something about Snivellus. Let’s get you to bed.’

‘Sirius, you didn’t—’

‘Had nothing to do with it. I swear. None of us did. This was Lizzie and Sam and their lot.’

‘Girls?’ Remus’s eyebrows reached for the top of his head.

‘Yep. They bewitched his clothes,’ Sirius reported with admiration.

‘To do what?’

‘You mean what _not_ to do, Moony. His robes sewed themselves up with him still in them. Trousers too, Lizzie tells me. He was quite stuck in them. The hem of his robes acted like a drawstring, he could barely move.’

‘How did he get out?’

‘What makes you think he got out?’

‘Sirius….’

‘Okay. Rosier came along and lifted the spell. Still. It was quite a sight to see him on the ground, with his hands sewn into his sleeves and his robe looking like a closed potato sack!’ Sirius wiped his eyes. ‘Moony, I’m so glad you played that trick on him. It’s the prank that keeps on pranking!’

‘I don’t think it’s really that funny, Sirius,’ Remus said softly.

‘Oh, come on!’

‘No, I mean it. It’s not Snape’s fault that that card got his hopes up. Have you ever been turned down by a girl?’

‘Have you?’

‘I don’t _care_ if I have been,’ Remus said with a shrug. ‘But most blokes would do. I think Lizzie should just let it drop. He’s already terrorising the younger students, taking points for any little thing.’

‘All right, all right,’ Sirius allowed with a wave of his hand. ‘I didn’t know you were going to be so morose about it.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll leave you to rest.’

Remus caught his hand and pulled him back. ‘Stay with me? As Padfoot?’ he requested. ‘I’ll explain later,’ he promised.

Sirius simply shrugged and a flash later was Padfoot. He pulled himself onto the bed and licked Remus’s face affectionately. They napped together and Remus privately confirmed his professor’s statements in her letter: being able to be together, no matter what the form, made all the difference.

 

By Wednesday night, Remus’s leg was fully healed and his other injuries were long faded. He pulled out his first- and second-year Defence Against the Dark Arts texts and went to the appointed classroom to meet Bill Weasley. On the way, he bumped into Kingsley Shacklebolt. The sixth-year Slytherin was tall, handsome, and the current star of their Quidditch team. 

‘You off to the library?’ he asked in his deep voice when they met on a staircase.

‘No, I have a tutoring appointment,’ Remus answered. Kingsley barred his way with an arm on the banister. ‘Shacklebolt, I need to get past before the—’ The staircase they were on rumbled and broke away from the wall. It swivelled slowly south. He was stuck, for the moment.

‘Been meaning to ask you sommat,’ Kingsley said. He was quite tall already, and standing above Remus, he loomed impressively.

‘What’s that?’ Remus swallowed. Kingsley was one of the three people Sirius agreed to let him date. Could he be about to ask….

‘You heard what happened to Snape lately?’

‘Oh. Yes. I can’t say I blame Felicity, but I hardly approve of her revenge, if that’s what you—’

‘Nah,’ Kingsley sneered and waved his free hand, ‘that’s not my problem. Problem is he’s being a right prat about it and no one can talk him down. Swears he was set up. As if,’ Kingsley chuckled, ‘Felicity high-and-mighty Munro would have anything to do with the pathetic rotter in the first place. But that’s not the half of it.’

The staircase clunked into its new moorings. Neither of them moved. ‘Thing is, see, that he’s taken it into his head that your lot are somehow behind it. That you put Felicity up to giving him some ridiculous card. That’s what Rosier and Lestrange say, anyway. Now, there wouldn’t be any truth to that, would there?’

Remus looked up into Kingsley’s chocolate eyes. His dark skin seemed to swallow the faint glow of the torches and almost reflect it back, like polished mahogany. His hair was bristle-short and tightly curled. He had an earring.

‘That’s new, is it?’ Remus heard himself asking, pointing to the gold hoop.

‘Christmas. Answer the question, Lupin,’ he threatened.

‘Or….’

‘Or I’ll start asking more questions myself. Anything to shut the bugger up. As we heard it, you lot aren’t supposed to be getting up to any japes. No more taking the mickey out of Snape, or the Headmaster will dump all four of you out on your ears. I’d hate to think after so stern a warning, and with so little time left in school, you all might come to nothing over a simple prank gone out of control, right?’

‘Shacklebolt, are you trying to scare me or help me? Because either way, you can piss off. Everyone knows that Snape’s had a crush on Felicity forever. She’s one of the best-looking girls in school; it’s hardly surprising.’

‘Everyone knows, but since when does a puny thing like Snape go after the prize like that? I’ve never even seen him look twice at a girl, not seriously. Why now?’

Remus shrugged. ‘I honestly couldn’t say. Have you asked him?’

Kingsley snorted. ‘Like I said, he says _she_ approached _him_. Now you know and I know that’s not very likely. So what really did happen?’

Remus tried to get around Kingsley. ‘Why would you think I know anything? I’m late--’

‘I’m not done,’ Kingsley said, blocking him. He had his wand out before Remus could blink. ‘Did you put her up to it? Revenge for that story he told about you in the Prefects’ Bath?’

‘Snape misinterpreted events. I have nothing to prove.’

‘One of your friends, then? Look, I don’t really care. Tell you the truth, I’m about ready to knock his head in myself. But the way I figure it, if that is what happened, you’ll want to cover your tracks a bit.’

Remus sighed. It was tiresome to spar verbally with Shacklebolt, particularly when he was right. On the other hand, he was a Slytherin, and as he admitted, he had no love for Snape. ‘What do you want, Kingsley?’ he asked in a soft, but cutting tone.

Kingsley smiled, white teeth glinting in the torchlight. ‘A date with you.’

Remus didn’t have to feign surprise. Shacklebolt wanted to blackmail him into something he wanted to do, anyway! He frowned. ‘I’m involved elsewhere,’ he said, shaking his head. 

‘I know.’

Remus cleared his throat. ‘Let me get this straight. You think I arranged for Felicity to come on to Snape, when she had no intention of entertaining his advances. You expect me to cheat on my partner with you, in exchange for which, you’ll....’

‘Drop my investigation. Tell Snape he’s barking, that I had a “talk” with you,’ he slapped his wand tip against his other hand, ‘and I’m convinced that your merry band had nothing to do with whatever unfortunate incidents occurred relative to Felicity Munro.’

Remus pretended to think about it. ‘We didn’t have anything to do with it,’ he said after a moment.

‘All right,’ Shacklebolt said, tilting his head sideways in a shrug. His neck cracked when he righted himself. ‘So you should go on a date with me, and I’ll tell Snape that.’

‘And he’ll believe you?’ Remus pressed.

Kingsley came down one step. While this put his face more on a level with Remus’s, it also brushed their chests together. ‘I’m very convincing,’ he rumbled.

‘One date,’ Remus insisted.

‘That’s all it will take,’ Kingsley answered. He slipped his arms around Remus quickly and half-lifted him to his toes to kiss him. He was strong and forceful, but in contrast to Snape, he clearly knew what he was doing.

‘Friday night,’ he said after he let go. Remus leaned against the banister. 

‘I have plans. Saturday,’ Remus countered.

Shacklebolt nodded and backed up the staircase. ‘Seven o’clock. Entrance hall. Don’t be late.’ He disappeared into the corridor to the left of the flight, and the staircase began its trek back where it started.

 

Remus stopped in a bathroom nearby to compose himself before meeting Bill. He hoped the young man would still be there, since his negotiation with Kingsley had put him quite behind schedule.

Bill was there, packing up. ‘I thought you maybe changed your mind,’ he said, brightening when Remus set down his things.

‘No, sorry. I was just delayed.’ _Just damn near brought off in the middle of a staircase by nothing more than a cheap thug with a good tongue_ , he thought, then forced the thought away. ‘Now,’ he said, shaking off the encounter and pulling out his wand, ‘what did you need help with? Blocking spells? Disarming charms?’

‘I need Professor Raines to like me.’

Remus stared at Bill. ‘Bill, don’t...Professor Raines doesn’t like anyone.’

‘Yes, he does. He likes you.’

‘No, he doesn’t,’ Remus laughed and took a seat at one of the desks.

‘He talks about you all the time,’ Bill informed him. ‘He’s always mentioning you as an example.’

Remus grunted in surprise. ‘Well, he doesn’t show it,’ he commented. ‘But anyway, Bill, really, it’s not important if he likes you or not.’

‘But it is!’ Bill cried. ‘I can’t...I can do the work, but when he growls at me, I freeze up.’

‘I can’t make...I don’t know how to stop that, Bill,’ Remus said honestly. ‘He’s never been kind in person.’

Bill sank into a chair and swung his legs angrily. ‘He’s a rotten professor,’ he grumbled. ‘Flitwick’s nice. McGonagall’s strict, but she’s okay. Dee’s fine as long as you pay attention. But Raines.... He’s horrible. I wish you taught Defence.’

Remus smiled. ‘Well, thanks, Bill, but I don’t really think that’s likely, either. Look, if you want help on your counter-curses, and it’s Raines that throws you, maybe I should try to fluster you a bit. Like Raines would.’

‘Okay, that sounds good,’ Bill said eagerly. He slipped out of his seat and came to the centre of the room. ‘You be Raines, then,’ he instructed, ‘and I’ll...be me.’

Remus laughed. He cut himself off, though, so he could impersonate their irascible Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. ‘Weasley, if you’d be so kind as to show the rest of the class how to counter the Jelly-legs Jinx? I’m sure it will prove enlightening,’ he sneered.

‘Yes, sir,’ Bill chirped. He held up his wand and executed a simple wand movement. ‘ _Dextrus!_ ’ A small stream of white fizzled from the end of his wand.

‘Pitiful,’ Remus assessed. ‘I expect better from someone of your stock, Weasley.’

‘But I did it right,’ Bill said informally, looking up.

‘Did I give you permission to speak, Weasley?’ Remus asked sharply.

‘No, sir,’ Bill answered softly.

‘What?’

‘No, sir,’ he said more strongly.

‘Kindly demonstrate again, properly this time, if you can manage that,’ Remus requested archly. It was rather cathartic, to imitate their most hated professor. He knew his subject, and there was no doubt students learned, but more out of fear than excitement. He paced a tight circle around the desks with his hands clasped behind his back. 

Bill set up again and again executed the spell correctly. 

‘Hm,’ Remus grunted in a grudging acknowledgement. ‘Of course, it’s relatively simple to execute a spell under sanitised conditions. Weasley, I wonder how well you can defend against this!’ He turned in a swirl and said, ‘ _Rictusempra!_ ’

Bill jumped. ‘ _Protego!_ ’ he yelled, but not fast enough. Remus’s curse hit him in the stomach, and he began laughing.

‘ _Finite Incantatem,_ ’ Remus said quickly. ‘Are you all right, Bill?’ he asked, dropping his imperious character.

‘I’m...fine...’ Bill choked out between breaths. ‘This is great, Remus. Really...what...I need.’

‘Okay,’ Remus agreed. He closed his lips between his teeth, thinking. ‘I think we need a signal, to make sure we stop if you need to do. How about if you just say “Godric Gryffindor” if you want to stop. I can’t imagine that coming up in a conversation.’

‘Sure,’ Bill said with a shrug. He stood up and inspected his wand tip. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Unacceptable performance, Weasley,’ Remus told him instantly. ‘However, I don’t fancy ruining my career for a puling idiot such as yourself. Unfortunately, it seems your incompetence has made your classmates equally unwilling to stand up against you. We shall therefore be forced to find some other object on which to...rehearse.’ He waved his wand in an intricate motion. A whole bunch of balloons appeared. ‘Each of these contains a spell. I will release them, Mr Weasley, and you shall attempt to combat them.’

‘That’s amazing,’ Bill gasped.

‘What have I told you about speaking when not invited to do so?’ Remus hissed.

Bill hung his head.

‘Now pay attention, please. Ready, on my mark, go!’ He popped a balloon with the lit tip of his wand.

‘ _Locomotor Mortis_ ,’ the balloon called out. Bill dropped his wand.

‘Weasley!’ Remus shouted in mock-anger. ‘If you fumble like that in a battle, you will surely never survive. Do you wish to become fodder for the Forces of Darkness?’

‘No, sir!’ Bill said quickly.

‘Then concentrate!’ He crossed to the balloons again. ‘Three. Two. One. Go!’

The balloon popped, reciting a curse to raise boils. Bill came up with the counter-curse within a few seconds.

‘You’ll have to be faster than that, Weasley. Do you think a dark wizard would wait while you thought of the spell you need? Try again.’

The third balloon held a disarming spell. Bill cast the shield charm again, this time quite well indeed. 

Remus sighed. ‘Bill, I don’t think this is working. I don’t think I’m intimidating you enough.’

‘No, you are,’ Bill insisted. ‘It’s helping. In fact, I like it,’ he admitted. ‘Can we have another go? Only this time, can we…can we not concentrate so much on magic, but just….’

Remus thought he might understand. ‘You have something planned, don’t you? And you want me to role-play Professor Raines for you to practise what you want to say to him? That you want him to be nicer to you in class?’

‘Not just in class. Anywhere. I want him to like me. And yes, I do want to talk to him about other things.’

‘Never going to happen, not to your face,’ Remus explained. But the look on Bill’s face was so desperate that Remus gave in with a sigh. ‘I don’t know why you’re such a masochist,’ Remus told him, looking at his watch. ‘But, all right. We can have one more go before we better get back.’ He sat back down at the desk. ‘Well, Mr Weasley, what is it you wanted to talk to me about?’

Bill beamed at him. ‘Sir, I wanted to ask you about career advice.’

‘Career advice?’ Remus echoed. ‘Don’t be daft, Weasley; you’ll discuss career advice with your Head of House, fifth year. Now run along.’

‘I really wanted to talk to _you_ , sir,’ Bill insisted, coming around the desk to one side. ‘You see, I want to be an Auror, or a curse-breaker, or something like that. And I know that my Defence marks are probably the most important factor in acceptance.’

‘You?’ Remus asked disdainfully. ‘Well, I suppose there’s enough money in it,’ he commented crassly.

‘Please sir, it’s not the money, Professor.’

‘Well, apply yourself to your studies, Weasley, and don’t waste your professors’ time.’

‘I hoped you’d be willing to give me extra coaching,’ Bill blurted as Remus rose. Bill reached out impulsively and took Remus’s hand.

‘If you do that to Raines, you might not get it back,’ Remus said suddenly, snatching his hand away.

‘I can’t help it!’ Bill wailed. ‘I think I’m going mad, Remus. I think about Professor Raines all the time. When I’m not in class, I want to _be_ in class with him, just to be near him. He used to be a curse-breaker, you know. I’ve seen pictures in his office. Sometimes I think I do poorly in class just to get detention with him, just to be alone with him! I know it’s wrong! I can’t help it,’ he concluded miserably. He threw himself into the nearest chair and put his forehead in his hands. He began to cry.

‘Hey, steady on,’ Remus said, perplexed. ‘It’s…normal to get crushes on teachers. It’s okay,’ he told the boy. Bill’s face was red and blotchy now. Great tears spilled out of his eyes and splashed on the desk. Not knowing what else he could do, Remus put his arms around the younger student. ‘I’m glad you said something,’ he said between patting Bill’s head and back. ‘It happens occasionally. Don’t know why you picked Raines, though,’ he joked. Bill hiccoughed and took a huge gulp of air. ‘Look, you can’t go ’round trying to get teachers to like you, especially not _that_ way.’

‘I know!’ Bill cried. ‘I just…the way he looks at us. It makes me want to do anything for him. Anything! I want to fall on my knees and beg him to like me. I want to touch him. I want him to touch me.’

‘Er…’ Remus replied. The idea of anyone crushing on Raines was probably about as disturbing as anyone with Snape, but at least Raines was admittedly dashing. ‘Well, I understand,’ he said to comfort Bill, ‘at least in principle. But you could get in a lot of trouble. And so could Raines.’ 

Bill was inconsolable. Remus sat down next to him and pulled him into his lap like a father or elder brother. Counselling was perhaps his least favourite part of being a prefect, but Bill clung to him as if Remus might fall apart without being held. Remus simply sat, smoothed Bill’s hair, and said the same encouraging nothings his mother said to him when he was younger, until Bill’s weeping subsided.

‘I’m being a baby,’ Bill announced.

‘No, you’re just lonely,’ Remus assured him. ‘It happens. It’s okay.’

‘I think…’ Bill mused aloud. ‘Do me a favour: Insult me like Raines?’

‘Weasley,’ Remus said in imitation of Raines’s irritated bark, ‘if you think your transparent attempts to sway my affection with this…this utterly juvenile display will have any effect on your end-of-term exam, you are sorely mistaken. You are without a doubt the most ingratiating, immature, incompetent—immmm—’ The rest of his insult was lost as Bill kissed him hard.

‘Okay,’ Bill said brightly when he broke the kiss. ‘It’s not Raines, then. It’s the insulting. Well, and the…power.’ He wiggled around on Remus’s lap to Remus’s alarm. ‘I simply _have_ to get a hundred percent on our exam, Professor,’ he said in a pleading, teasing tone. ‘Isn’t there _anything_ I can do to improve my marks?’

Remus shook his head at Bill and was about to tell him to get up and quit joking around, but the look in Bill’s eyes, so very serious, made Remus feel weak. ‘I’m sure I can’t think of anything,’ he said slowly, using Raines’s voice still. ‘Unless it’s that you get off me this instant.’

Bill jumped off Remus’s lap and stood in front of him, all innocence. ‘Surely there’s _something_ I can give you, sir, that will make you reconsider?’

Remus rose, aware of an uncomfortable tightness in his trousers. Bill was too young to know what he was doing! He shouldn’t play along. And what about Sirius? Kingsley was one thing – in fact, Kingsley had played right into Remus’s hands – but Bill Weasley? Between Arthur Weasley’s family and Molly Prewett’s, Bill was related to Remus distantly, but something like a second cousin of Sirius’s. He couldn’t do this without at least checking with Sirius.

But Bill was relentless. Remus retreated to the chair behind the empty teacher’s desk. ‘Please, Professor,’ Bill begged, stalking him around the desk. ‘I’ll do anything. Those marks mean everything to me.’

‘I…Weasley!’ Remus replied in a shocked tone. ‘I thought better of you. Trying to influence your position in class through…personal favours?’

Bill waggled his eyebrows. ‘ _Sexual_ favours,’ he corrected. ‘I want you to teach me how to please you, Professor. I know I’m not worthy, but…I know I can learn from you. I’m your willing pet, if you want me.’

Remus closed his eyes, willing his erection down. It just wasn’t right that someone so young could turn him on like this, without even knowing, it seemed, how seductive he could be. And the twist of “playing” Raines was doing things to Remus he never wanted to consider. He had spoken with McGonagall about being a teacher one day, but he’d never considered the awkwardness of a student finding him attractive. Though given McGonagall’s letter, he’d been thinking about it in reverse….

‘You want full marks?’ Remus heard himself asking, breathing heavily.

Bill nodded with utmost solemnity.

‘Come here, then,’ Remus told him, beckoning with one hand.

Bill arranged himself on Remus’s lap in the big, swivelling chair. He draped his legs on either side of Remus. He put his arms around Remus’s neck. ‘What should I do?’ Bill asked his “teacher.”

‘Tell me the properties of a counter-curse,’ Remus invited him, and began to kiss the younger boy’s neck.

‘Uh…’ Bill said, surprised by the kisses. ‘A c-counter-curse is…oh, that’s nice…it’s a spell used to block, end, or negate a curse. They can be spells that reverse the effects, such as—oh!’ he gasped when Remus nibbled his earlobe.

‘Continue,’ Remus ordered. He put his hands on Bill’s back and pulled him closer.

‘…Such as cancelling out a flaming hex with a freezing charm. Or they can be spells that dispel the magic, like “Finite Incantatem.” Or…’ he paused when Remus’s hand wandered to his arse and squeezed. ‘Or they can block, like a shielding spell. And there’s a whole class of counter-curses that are targeted specifically to undermine the curse itself, such as the Anti-Warts charm, which is only effective when used directly against the Warts charm.’ He rushed through the last example and ducked his head to kiss Remus on the mouth.

‘We’re not done with this lesson, Weasley,’ Remus warned him. ‘What are the main factors common to curses and counter-curses?’ He lifted his hips, leaning back in the chair.

‘Curses are influenced,’ Bill began to unbutton his robes, ‘by three common factors: intention, caster’s natural power, and potency.’ He rocked back and forth, rubbing their groins together. ‘These can affect the duration and severity of the curse. Counter-curses therefore must also account for power, potency, and intention.’ Bill opened his robes down to his waist and pulled them off his shoulders, lifted up his jumper (it had a large B on it) and took it off over his head. ‘Is that right, professor?’ he asked.

Remus whimpered. He was a pervert. He was breaking all kinds of rules, legal and moral, by allowing Bill to continue. But then unbidden he thought of how it had thrilled him to hear Sirius degrade him after the Snape incident, and how sexy it had been. Maybe Bill just needed to feel a little dirty, sometimes, too. He liked Bill. And looking at the immature, but somehow beautiful, torso, he felt dirty, again, but in a whole different way. Just as thrilling, but even more forbidden, than playing at it with Sirius. ‘That’s correct, Mr Weasley,’ he said in Raines’s grudging growl. ‘Now, list as many hexes, jinxes, and curses as you can think of, and a counter-spell for each, and no pausing, or I’ll take points.’ He sat up in the chair and rubbed a thumb over Bill’s right nipple.

‘Jelly-legs, and dispel magic. Kicking curse, and the calming charm. Hurling hex, shield spell. Babbling hex, and silencing charm.’ He gasped when Remus touched his nipple with the tip of his tongue. ‘Tickling charm, and dispel magic. Burning hex, freezing charm. Anti-aging and aging curses. As….ah-hah! That tickles!’ He squirmed while Remus sucked on the red bulb of skin.

‘You paused,’ Remus told him. ‘You’ll never amount to anything with that lack of concentration, Weasley.’

‘Sorry, professor,’ Bill panted. ‘I’m a bit…distracted today.’

‘Yes, you are,’ Remus said disapprovingly. ‘I wonder what we can do to un-distract you.’

He bounced Bill on his lap, slapping their groins together through the fabric. He longed to do more, Bill was practically begging for it, but he couldn’t bring himself to violate the boy then and there. Besides, he reasoned with the decreasing portion of his brain that _could_ still reason, he still hadn’t cleared this with Sirius. If he just stopped short of sex, it would be okay. He could encourage Bill to find someone more his own age afterward. It would all be okay.

He eased Bill’s robes up and unbuttoned them the rest of the way. ‘Weasley, you are out of uniform,’ he said with a smirk. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’

‘Ungh,’ Bill said, bucking hard against Remus’s hips. ‘I’m…I’m in trouble?’

‘You certainly are. Well? What are you waiting for, Weasley? Touch yourself.’

‘I…I want you to….’

‘I said you’re in trouble. This is your punishment. In fact,’ Remus pushed up with his toes against the floor and lifted Bill under his arms. ‘On the desk,’ he ordered. Bill backed up and off him, then sat on the large oak teacher’s desk. ‘Now touch yourself.’

‘Yes, professor,’ Bill said obediently, but a bit disappointed. Remus plunged his hand into his own trousers, unable to wait any longer. He came into his hand within mere seconds. He hardly paid any attention to Bill while he recovered and cleaned up with his wand, but when he looked up again, Bill had laid down on the desk surface, sideways, and he had unbuttoned his jeans fly for access. He played with his diminutive dick, fumbling for purchase, unable to keep to his rhythm.

‘You have three minutes to complete your assignment, Weasley,’ Remus said to hurry him along. Damn, he was going to be something else once he grew up a bit. He was something else now, really. ‘Three minutes, you sorry excuse for a Gryffindor. Do you think any of the other first-years are so far behind? Two minutes, now. If you want to be an Auror, Weasley, you’ve got to learn to perform under pressure. Well? Come on, Weasley! We haven’t got all day. Come—’

And he did. His ejaculation was as immature as the rest of him, but it shot high and hot nonetheless. He looked at his hand in fascination. 

‘Here,’ Remus held up his wand. ‘ _Evanesco_.’ The evidence of their activity disappeared. ‘Feel all right?’

‘I think I hit my head on the desk when I…when I….’

‘Came,’ Remus supplied. ‘It’s okay. Everyone does it.’

‘What, hits their head?’

‘No, everyone, er, well.’ He gestured to Bill’s tiny prick, receding back to its foreskin. ‘Boys, anyway. I don’t know what girls do. But everyone brings themselves off.’

‘Not pretending to be with a teacher, though, right?’ Bill asked. He rolled to his side and sat up, legs swinging off the desk, a child once more.

‘Well, not always,’ Remus smiled. ‘Look. I think we’d better not do this again. There are bound to be boys in your own class, or a bit older than you, and you can play pretend games with them—’

‘But you’re so good at it!’ Bill protested.

‘Thanks, but it’s not right, Bill. And even if it were…I shouldn’t have done that, because I’m already with someone else.’

‘Oh,’ Bill acknowledged, dejected. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Well, I don’t advertise,’ Remus apologised. ‘I should have never let you start.’

‘Are you angry?’ Bill looked like he might cry again.

‘No! Of course not,’ Remus explained. ‘But…well, I’m a prefect, and that’s almost like being a teacher. And you’re just…so young. I hope you find someone, Bill. Really.’

‘Yeah,’ Bill said noncommittally. ‘Well, I suppose we should go back to the tower?’

‘I think that would be best. It’s late.’

They navigated the school in silence. Once they took a sudden turn to avoid the Bloody Baron, and they had to re-route to get back on track because the corridor turned into a dead-end at that time of night, but otherwise their journey was quiet. As they approached the portrait of the Fat Lady, Remus smiled. ‘If it means anything, I think you did actually made progress.’

‘Progress on what?’ Bill asked.

‘Well, you seem to have less of a crush on Raines, now,’ Remus laughed. ‘And you definitely had no trouble performing under pressure.’

TBC….


	21. In which pretending is sometimes real

‘I can’t believe you!’ Sirius yelled when Remus told him about Bill.

‘Sirius….’

‘It’s bad enough you’re going off with Gideon, and now Kingsley. But Weasley?’ his voice cracked on the name. ‘He’s a child!’

‘Sirius, I didn’t plan it!’ Remus protested. ‘And I…it’s not like I shagged him. And it’s not like I ever will.’

Sirius crossed his arms and drew his knees up to his chest. ‘Can’t believe you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Remus repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. ‘That’s why I’m telling you now.’

‘I can’t believe you did that…without me!’ Sirius grinned and pounced on top of Remus. ‘Jeez. Bill smegging Weasley. I figured he was hot for you when he asked you to tutor, Remus. Only _you_ would be so thick as not to see it.’

‘Then you’re _not_ actually angry?’ Remus confirmed, aghast.

‘Well…not really. I mean, you told him to find someone his own age, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t actually bugger him?’

‘No, of course not!’ Remus rolled his eyes. ‘He’s just a kid.’

‘Okay, then.’ Sirius chewed on Remus’s neck. ‘You’re still a perverse bastard.’ Remus punched him in the arm and Sirius went right on nibbling at him. ‘Now, what’s this about Kingsley?’

 

They worked extra-hard on Thursday to make sure they’d be free on Friday night for Peter’s planned shoot. Whenever possible, they had been adding wizarding photos to their calendar, for increased stimulation and appeal. They had still only worked through a bare minimum of kinks, though. James was worried.

‘Soon we’ll be done here and off working for Dumbledore full-time,’ he complained as they set up for their night’s work. ‘And then none of us will have this kind of leisure.’

‘We’ll have more, I think,’ Sirius said confidently. ‘No homework.’

‘Besides, there are certain kinks I refuse to try out,’ Lily said firmly.

‘Too right. Copraphilia, for example,’ Peter pointed out between tugging on the four-poster beds to create their backdrop. ‘Who would want to do that?’

Remus, who knew that Sirius was curious about urination, anyway, but who refused to try it himself, said nothing.

‘Yeah, and I don’t care what any of you say,’ Sirius announced. ‘I’m _not_ going to ask Reggie, just so we can explore incest.’

‘No kidding,’ Lily chimed in. ‘That goes double for me and Petunia.’

‘Well, we don’t need pictures for everything, I suppose,’ James said wistfully. ‘Besides, Lil, there are many things I love about your family. You sister is not on that list.’

‘Good. Just so we’re clear.’

‘We’re clear.’

‘What are we doing tonight, Peter?’ Remus asked loudly to get things going.

‘Somnophilia and Menage-a-trois,’ Peter consulted his list. ‘I thought we’d start with the easy one….’

‘Who gets to be asleep?’ Sirius asked, lounging on the bed.

‘You, since you’re there,’ Lily answered leeringly, ‘but remember, you have to _stay_ asleep no matter what we do to you.’

Sirius laughed and kicked off his shoes, stripped down to his shorts, and settled under the sheets.

‘Pull the bedspread off. It’ll be identifiable,’ Remus cautioned.

‘Close your eyes, Sirius,’ James said.

‘Not that tight,’ Peter told him.

Lily climbed onto the bed. ‘Oh, what are we going to do about his face? You have to see it to know he’s asleep.’

‘Mask,’ Remus said. ‘Just over the eyes, but with holes for them. Don’t want anyone thinking he’s a Death Eater.’

‘Definitely not,’ Sirius said with his eyes still closed.

Lily conjured a mask as required and Sirius sat up to tie it around his head. ‘He looks like Zorro!’ Lily exclaimed, clapping her hands.

‘Yeah, a really poncy Zorro,’ quipped James. ‘Lie back down, come on, we haven’t got all night.’

They repositioned themselves and Peter got the camera aimed. It took a long time to shoot, because Sirius kept laughing in his “sleep”, or “waking up” to surprise Lily.

‘Sirius, come on,’ James said. ‘If you can’t focus here, we’ll sub in Remus.’

‘Fine,’ Sirius said, sitting up and planting a kiss on Lily’s cheek. ‘But I bet he’s no better at pretending to sleep than I am.’ He stripped off the mask and handed it to Remus, then went to sulk on his bed. ‘And I warn you, I’m going to heckle. We’ll see who’s better.’

Remus accepted the mask, and the challenge. ‘Be gentle, Lil,’ he told her as he stabbed his legs into the rumpled sheets. He put his head down on the pillow and took up a splayed position.

‘Nice,’ Peter commented. ‘Lil, get in the sheets with him. That’s it. Drape your arm….’

Lily snuggled close as if they had been asleep, then propped herself on one elbow. She obscured her face with her hair. Once the shutter began to click, she pulled the sheet away, as far down as the waistband of Remus’s boxers. She threw one leg over his hips and Remus turned onto his back. 

‘Open your arms and relax them,’ Peter coached. Remus resembled a rather warped crucifix.

‘No, too religious,’ James said. ‘One arm over your head?’ Remus complied. ‘Better.’

Remus took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh as Lily, back to the camera, positioned herself to make it look like she was rubbing her clit over his penis. 

‘It’s too static,’ James said. ‘Let’s try something else.’

Lily shot a look back at James that suggested he was just being voyeuristic, but she said, ‘Okay, Remus, sit up a bit. Prop yourself up on the pillows. Sirius, give us your pillow.’

A pillow promptly hit Remus in the face.

‘You’ll pay for that, Black,’ he growled, not bothering to open his eyes. He positioned the pillow behind his head.

‘Oh, give him a book. No, not a textbook, the other one,’ Lily said, pointing at the copy of _The Golden Bough_. ‘That would put anyone to sleep. Remus, open it up and then let it fall half out of your hand, like you’ve been reading.’

‘I get it,’ Remus agreed. He opened his eyes, flipped to a spot about halfway through the book, and then let it slide off his lap, thumb holding the place.

‘Yep. Loll your head to one side,’ Lily instructed.

‘Peter, there’s a glass of water on the bedside table,’ Sirius suggested. ‘Give him a dribble of drool.’

‘Bugger off, Sirius,’ Remus said.

‘Can’t, thanks, not until you’re through.’

‘Ladies,’ James warned. ‘Okay, so our victim has fallen asleep over his book. Now what?’

‘Just take the pictures, Peter,’ Lily said. She stood over Remus, one foot on either side of his legs. ‘Have you got a shot?’ she asked.

‘Yeah. Brilliant framing,’ Peter told her. His eyes boggled a bit as he adjusted the lens. Lily sank to her knees and took the book out of Remus’s limp hand. She shut it on the bookmark, then tipped it and used the bookmark to trace little patterns on Remus’s skin. Remus tensed.

‘You can’t tense up; it’ll show on the film,’ Peter admonished.

‘Sorry,’ Remus muttered. ‘Keep going.’

Lily put the closed book on his chest and slid alongside him. She turned him on his side with his head still facing the camera. She wrapped her arm and one leg around him, reaching down inside the sheet quite indicatively.

‘Need a blow shot,’ James said suddenly. Remus sat up a bit, worked his shorts off, and dropped them off the side of the bed. Lily folded the sheets down around his knees, then sat with her legs to the side, leaning onto his thighs. 

‘How’s this?’ she asked. Her breath felt hot and cold against his pubic hair.

‘Good. Close your eyes, Remus.’

‘Move back and forth, Lil, for the camera,’ James told her. Lily rocked forward and back while the shutter captured shot after shot. She repositioned her lower arm so that, instead of pinning it against Remus’s hip, she placed it between his legs. Her rocking brought her chin almost into contact with his prick, then away, then almost touching again. Remus could feel her motion and her breath on his balls.

‘That enough?’ Lily asked.

‘Yeah,’ James told her. ‘Let’s let the boys kiss and make up.’

 

They moved on to ménage-a-trois, bringing Sirius back in. This was mostly a series of tasteful upper-body shots, Lily standing between them, all topless, facing one and with her back to the other. They took a few simulated shots as well, positioned strategically. By then, James was champing at the bit to get Lily alone, and Remus and Sirius seemed to understand, without even saying it, that they would invite Peter to their bed that night.

Hours later, Peter woke next to Remus. He glanced over at the next bed and saw Sirius sleeping alone, arms and legs flung all over the edges. Remus snored lightly next to Peter. Moonlight from the window bathed his face and turned his brownish hair silver. He murmured something and turned over, clutching Peter as he settled on his side.

Peter knew that this couldn’t last. He allowed himself to hope, sometimes, that he, Remus, Sirius, James, and Lily, might always be like this, might always have a sometime something, but deep down, he knew differently. At least he was picking up a few tricks, and he resolved to enjoy every single good moment while it lasted. 

But on nights like this, it was so comforting to feel another person next to him. Peter had always idolised James, but knew better than to look for reciprocation there. Next to him, though, Peter loved Remus. He loved Sirius, too, but not quite in the same way. Sirius was a brother, a co-conspirator, a protector. Remus treated him like an equal.

Peter smoothed Remus’s hair away from his forehead gently. Werewolves were usually either asleep, or awake, with no in-between, half-sleepy drowsing except immediately after a full moon. He didn’t want to wake Remus, only admire him. 

Remus muttered again, punched out with his left hand, and then lay still. Peter shushed him carefully and smoothed his hair again. After seven years, they all knew that nightmares were not uncommon for Remus. Peter stroked the length of Remus’s arm, trying to soothe him. Remus whimpered softly and turned again, pressing his back into Peter.

‘Shh,’ Peter whispered. He petted him all over, over his arms, his back, his chest. He brushed over Remus’s pubic hair and froze. Remus shifted his leg and leaned into Peter’s hand. Peter rubbed tiny circles with his fingertips. Remus sighed. He canted his hips toward Peter’s movements. Peter dropped a kiss onto Remus’s shoulder and touched Remus’s balls tentatively. Remus’s cock sprang to life, but he did not wake. Peter pressed his own hardness between the cheeks of Remus’s arse but held his hips still. He cupped Remus’s balls and kissed his back again. His hand slid up Remus’s shaft, pumping it. Remus worked his hips in his sleep and the motion made his arse buck up and down along Peter’s cock. Peter pulled Remus closer, opening his legs just a bit to push himself further into Remus’s crack. He matched Remus’s rhythm, kissing his shoulder and arm where he could reach them. He slid his lower arm between Remus’s neck and the mattress, flattened his hand over Remus’s breast. Remus still did not wake. 

Peter humped and pumped until he reached orgasm, then resumed until he brought Remus off as well. He buried his face in Remus’s hair. Remus took a deep breath in, and the next moment, Peter could tell he was awake.

‘Did I have a dream?’ he asked in a high-pitched, quiet voice. He cleared his throat. ‘Sirius?’

‘It was a good dream,’ Peter told him. ‘Go back to sleep.’

TBC....


	22. In which Remus takes a chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Madam Toussaud’s Got Nothing on Him

Remus’s stomach began to turn itself into knots about mid-afternoon on Saturday. He kept counting down the hours until his appointment with Kingsley Shacklebolt. The letter had been vividly graphic and just a touch on the dangerous side, but it piqued Remus’s curiosity in the abstract. Now that the reality closed in, he felt just a bit apprehensive. Kingsley was a loose cannon, even for a Slytherin. 

By four o’clock, Remus was so nervous that he shut his books and didn’t even try to get more work done. He almost skipped supper, but Peter convinced him that he’d be better equipped to handle Kingsley with a little something to keep him going. He didn’t even really know what spooked him so much; he could probably match Shacklebolt for strength, and he was probably faster, too. But Kingsley was crafty, and he was clever, and while Remus was fairly sure Snape had not told anyone about his lycanthropy, if anyone could work it out, it would be Shacklebolt. Once he saw Remus’s scar, he would almost certainly know. And he was under no compulsion from Dumbledore to hide what he might know.

Remus was also a bit nervous, he realised at supper, because he had no idea whether Kingsley would try the things in his fantasy. He didn’t know whether he wanted him to try or not, either. Clearly, the tall, dark Slytherin was desirable in his own right. Few students looked as good as he did, on or off the Quidditch pitch, and he never had to look far for someone to share his nights. But the detail with which he laid out his plans for Remus, and those plans themselves, made Remus shiver with fear and anticipation. It was entirely new territory, and Remus didn’t know if he’d like it or not.

Remus ducked out of the meal a few minutes before everyone else, having eaten sparsely. ‘I know,’ he told Sirius, ‘I’m being ridiculous. But I need some air.’ Sirius shrugged, but before Remus left, he pressed a coin into Remus’s hand with a knowing look. Remus smiled. It was an “emergency signal” they had devised for one another long ago. If any one of them needed a distraction, he could signal the others by flipping the coin. It was a reminder that his friends could still help him if he wound up needing it. So Sirius was worried, too, he thought as he squeezed his lover’s arm before leaving.

He crossed the entrance hall quickly and left through the main door. It was cold, but Remus could ignore the cold for short periods of time. He took an abbreviated turn down to the lake and back. It was just long enough for his cheeks to turn bright red and his feet to start feeling a little numb. He really was just being stupid, he decided. Shacklebolt would never do anything that might jeopardise his career, including intentionally harm another student, even a werewolf. Encouraged, he opened the door and passed back into the drafty, but comparatively warm, entrance hall, just in time to see half the school come through on their way out of supper. 

Kingsley Shacklebolt leaned against a column on the far side of the hall, near the staircase that led to Potions and the Slytherin dungeons. He had one foot balanced on the column, his arms were crossed, and he was chewing on the stick from a Honeyduke’s HoneyCone. He wore tight jeans and a collared, knit shirt under a green cable-knit jumper, no robes. He watched the younger students stream up the stairs or down to the dungeons with calculated disinterest. Rosier said a few words to him, but Shacklebolt merely shook his head and shrugged. Rosier continued down the stairs. Then Kingsley’s head swivelled toward the front door. He saw Remus, cheeks flushed and hair dishevelled from the wind, and he smiled. 

Remus was not at all sure about that smile.

He crossed the entrance hall, trailing behind the last few straggling students. The other Marauders, he was glad to see, were nowhere in sight. As he came within polite distance of the sixth-year, he stopped. ‘Well, I’m here,’ he said unnecessarily.

‘So I see. Did you bring your cloak?’

‘Are we going outside?’ Remus asked.

‘We might,’ Kingsley answered cryptically.

‘Well, I’ve just been. It’s windy, but unless you mean to stay out, it’s not too bad,’ Remus hedged. Why all the secrecy? He decided that perhaps Kingsley just wanted to put him off-balance.

‘Would you rather stay in?’ he asked. 

Remus was taken aback. Ordinarily, Shacklebolt liked to be the one in charge, something that according to rumour fuelled the mutual dislike between himself and his house-mate, Snape. ‘I gathered from our conversation the other night that you had specific plans,’ he said instead. He didn’t really want Kingsley to know that he knew what Kingsley supposedly wanted.

‘I do,’ Shacklebolt told him, swinging his bag onto his shoulder. ‘But they’re not confined to one place. I know somewhere we can go inside the castle, if you prefer.’

‘Okay,’ Remus told him. Kingsley held out his arm to invite Remus up the wide staircase, and Remus climbed.

Shacklebolt led him through several corridors and up numerous staircases before Remus realised where they had to be headed. There was a tunnel behind a portrait of Linus van Peltham that led to a small conservatory about midway up one of the towers. The Marauders had found it in their third year. They didn’t think Filch knew about it, but they didn’t know who else might, so they had never chanced using it for anything important.

‘Ever been in here?’ Kingsley asked as he moved the portrait aside.

‘Once or twice,’ Remus admitted. There was no sense lying. If Kingsley were trying to impress, he’d have to work harder. No one knew more about the castle than the Marauders, Remus was sure.

‘I use this room from time to time,’ the black boy explained as they picked their way through the dark tunnel, lit only by their wand tips. ‘I don’t think any of the teachers know about it, nor Filch. The house-elves clean it, but they’re never any trouble.’

‘No, they never are,’ Remus agreed, making conversation. ‘Have you ever been to the kitchens?’

‘Yeah, a few times,’ Kingsley told him. ‘I don’t like them in numbers, though,’ he went on darkly. ‘Creepy.’

‘Not as creepy as—’ Remus began, then cut himself off. They walked in silence for a few more steps, then entered the little room.

It was cosy, with a low fainting couch and many kneeling cushions, an ancient spinet and moulding stacks of music. Kingsley slung his bag onto the top of the instrument and pulled out several candelabras of various sizes and a quantity of candles to go in them. He also extracted a bootleg Wireless machine, which he flipped on and fiddled with the dials before finding a station he liked. ‘Get WWN at home?’

‘Yes,’ Remus answered. ‘Never bother here, though.’

Kingsley arranged the candlesticks and lit the candles with his wand. The light flickered over their faces in alternating bright and shadow. The flames also heated the room up nicely, for there was no fireplace.

‘Have a seat,’ Kingsley invited him, taking up a post on the chaise. It forced Remus to either sit next to him on the chaise or on a cushion by his feet. If he sat at the same level, he would have no backrest; if he took the floor and used the chaise for his back, he would make himself Kingsley’s pet. He chose the couch.

‘We’re not all scum, you know,’ Kingsley said a few minutes later, into the silence. ‘Slytherins.’

‘I never said you were,’ Remus said honestly.

‘Because your friends say it enough for you,’ Kingsley replied calmly. He didn’t sound angry or defensive, merely stating it as fact.

‘Well, they do rather use Snape as a definitive,’ Remus smirked.

‘Snape’s…let’s not talk about Snape,’ Shacklebolt said. They fell into silence again. ‘So, you and Sirius,’ he said after a bit. ‘That really, er, serious?’

‘Yes,’ Remus said. ‘But not wholly exclusive,’ he added. The last thing he needed was for Kingsley to decide he had more blackmail material.

‘He knows you’re with me, in other words?’

‘Yes.’

Kingsley grunted an acknowledgement. Remus thought he might have been disappointed, but it was hard to tell from the monosyllable.

‘Did your plan involve _doing_ anything, or—’ Remus started, but he was cut off mid-sentence when Kingsley leaned over and kissed him. Enthusiastically. Remus opened his mouth and their tongues slid together, exploring each other’s teeth and lips. Remus turned for a better angle, found himself on his knees on the chaise, tipping Kingsley back toward the back rest. His hands were on Kingsley’s chest, holding him down. His flesh felt hot and thick, and he forgot his apprehension of earlier that day.

Kingsley peeled off his clothes between kisses. If Remus’s reaction surprised him, he took it in stride. He pulled off his jumper and the collared shirt underneath it, revealing a chest like polished mahogany and a pierced nipple to match his pierced ear. His muscles were far too defined and developed to have been acquired merely as a Beater. He leaned his bare back on the chaise, luxuriating, it seemed, in the way his skin reflected the candlelight.

Remus leaned back to get a good look. He swiped his palm over Kingley’s unpierced breast, then smiled as Kingsley caught his wrist and pushed his hand onto the pierced one. ‘Tug on it,’ he suggested. Remus hooked a finger into the ring and crooked it up. The whole nipple strained and Kingsley moaned appreciatively. Remus leaned in and teased the nipple with his tongue through the ring.

‘So good,’ Kingsley whispered. ‘You like this?’ he asked, plumping his nipple with his finger and thumb. ‘Bet you’d like to see me naked, hm?’

‘You’d be right,’ Remus told him, grinning. He backed away so that Kingsley could take off his very tight jeans. He shed his boots and then unbuttoned the jeans fly slowly, then slid them down his dark thighs to step out of them completely. He was wearing only a thong underneath, but he left it on and turned in the light. The string back stretched taut between his buttocks. McGonagall would have approved of his tight arse, Remus thought suddenly, and suppressed a laugh.

‘Something funny?’ Kingsley asked, turning back around.

‘No—well, yes, but not about you,’ Remus admitted. He offered his hand to bring Kingsley back to the fainting couch. 

Kingsley sat, straddling Remus, and opened his arms. ‘Come back down here and get me hard again,’ he said. Remus leaned forward and teased Kingsley’s dark flesh with his tongue. Kingsley’s arms closed around his head and began to push down toward his crotch. Remus went willingly, but pulled up short at the g-string pouch. Instead, he licked his way to one side and back up Kingsley’s lats to his arm. Kingsley hummed in pleasure, but pressed down again.

‘Eager, aren’t you?’ Remus asked. He twisted his head away and went in with his hand instead. ‘Not just yet,’ he teased. ‘All in good time.’

Kingsley snorted and sat up. He put his hand over Remus’s and brought it to his lips. ‘Suck me now, Lupin,’ he demanded, forcing Remus onto the cushions next to the chaise, ‘If you want anything else, suck.’

Remus pulled away with ease, which he knew surprised Kingsley, but he didn’t care. ‘I’m not here to be dominated,’ he said strongly, finished playing. ‘You asked _me_ , remember? I can leave now, but I don’t think you want me to do that, and you know as well as I do that your threats have no teeth. So it’s up to you, Shacklebolt. We can have a bit of fun as equals, or you can go find someone else to bully into stupid power games.’

Kingsley said nothing for a moment, sizing up Remus’s sincerity. ‘I really think you mean that,’ he concluded. ‘Okay. There’ll be time for that later, then. For now, get one of the candles,’ he said, inclining his head toward the cluster, ‘and bring it closer.’ Remus fetched one of the taller candlesticks, ones that had obviously been shrunk to fit into Kingsley’s bag. ‘Are you cold?’ Kingsley asked him as he fulfilled the request.

‘No,’ Remus told him truthfully.

‘Then would you show me your body?’ Kingsley asked. Politely, Remus noted.

Remus straightened. He pulled off his robes, revealing a pair of worn corduroy slacks and a jumper with holes in the elbows over a striped button-down shirt. He pulled off the jumper. ‘I don’t have anything to show you that’s quite as interesting as you do,’ he warned Kingsley.

‘Don’t stop,’ was all Kingsley said.

Remus unbuttoned his shirt and turned away when he pulled off the sleeves. He folded it fastidiously and set it on top of his robes and jumper, on a cushion to one side so they’d be off the floor. Then he shucked his shoes and stood barefoot on the musty floor. He came back to the chaise, still in his trousers.

‘You stopped,’ Kingsley whined.

‘For now,’ Remus told him. ‘See if you like this first,’ he continued. He knelt on the seat between Kingsley’s knees. Kingsley reached for the candle and lifted it out of its holder. He held the candle between their bodies, letting the flickering light glow against their skin. He lifted the candle to Remus’s scar.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, bringing the flame close enough that Remus could feel the heat, but just short of burning him.

‘Accident,’ Remus said shortly. ‘Dog bite,’ he provided his usual explanation.

‘Big dog,’ Kingsley said with raised eyebrows, but otherwise did not challenge it. A small droplet of wax poured off the top of the candle and landed on Remus’s arm. He hissed. ‘Did I burn you?’ Kingsley asked, snatching the candle away. 

‘It’s not bad.’ Remus shook his head. He pulled at the coagulating wax. ‘Gets caught in the hair, though, ouch.’

‘Yeah, it can,’ Kingsley commented strangely. He seemed to want to say something, but hesitated.

Remus remembered in time that he was not to know Kingsley’s predilections. ‘It’s okay,’ he said with a smile. ‘Just…we should probably be more careful with the flames, eh?’

‘Careful, yes.’ He set the candle back on its pedestal. ‘Give me your arm,’ he said. He grasped Remus’s arm where the wax had left a faint red weal on the inside of his elbow. Kingsley lifted his arm and sucked gently on the welt. 

Remus shuddered. Kingsley was talented. But before he thought of something to say, Kingsley had yanked on his arm to bring his scarred shoulder forward, and he was licking the bunched, pale skin with a broad, flat tongue. Remus braced himself against the backrest of the chair while Kingsley worked his way from shoulder to nipple slowly.

‘I like what I see,’ Kingsley rumbled once he had raised both Remus’s nipples to pertness. ‘How about the rest, then?’

Remus’s breath caught, but he rose and unzipped his trousers. He folded them and added them to the pile of his clothes, aware that Kingsley had stood and was moving around the room. The WWN continued its tinny serenade in the background. He felt Kingsley behind him a split-second before the other boy snapped his waistband against his back. ‘Those too, love,’ he ordered. ‘And then go have a lie down.’

Remus swallowed. Here was the test. He thought he knew what might be Kingsley’s next move. But he was here because he wanted to try it, and Kingsley was certainly proving to be as sensual as he appeared, and so far, they had done nothing that made Remus too uncomfortable. Biting his lip, he slipped the shorts down to his ankles and placed them over the top of his other clothes. He returned to the chaise and draped himself on it artfully, one leg bent under himself.

Kingsley stood by the standing candle, one hand hovering over the flame. ‘Damn, Lupin,’ he assessed as Remus took his seat. ‘You know, you ever want to tell Black where he can get off, I’ll be first in line to get what he’s got.’

‘Not first, Shacklebolt,’ Remus shot back, a little more harshly than he intended. ‘I mean, I know at least a few others who’d claim that right.’

‘Potter?’ Shacklebolt guessed. ‘Surely not Pettigrew?’

‘Did I mention names?’ Remus asked blandly. ‘Anyway, thank you.’

Kingsley growled, but smiled ferally. ‘You’re welcome. Now, as I was saying….’ He took up Remus’s previous position, looming over the pale young man. He held his hands bare centimetres from Remus’s skin, brushing over him with his body heat more than his pores. ‘You’re nice and warm,’ he observed. His hand paused over Remus’s erection. ‘Except here. Hot. For me, Lupin?’

‘Yes,’ Remus breathed.

Kingsley hummed approvingly. He leaned forward and parted Remus’s lips with his own in a soft kiss. ‘Look at me,’ he commanded, and Remus locked eyes with the other. Kingsley took down the candle again and extended the index finger of his other hand. Slowly, carefully, he reached into the pooling liquid by the wick and brought his finger away, coated in cooling wax. He peeled the wax away quickly before it hardened, then held his finger to Remus’s lips. Remus opened his mouth. Kingsley pushed his finger in, and Remus sucked it down as Kingsley pulled against him. 

Kingsley’s eyes clouded with contentment. He repeated the process, and Remus sucked his finger cool again. This seemed to signify something for Kingsley, because he tipped the candle and dripped hot wax onto his breast. Remus sat up, wiped it away, and leaned forward to lick and suck the heated flesh. They repeated the action for his other breast, except that Remus slid his lips down from the burnt spot to the nipple ring, pulling with his tongue. Kingsley clamped his hand in Remus’s hair and pulled his head up for a demanding, searching kiss. He released his head only to push him back against the chaise. He put the candle back and selected another one with more wax pooled at its top. He tipped it carefully over Remus’s chest, shushing him when he hissed from the melted wax hitting him. Kingsley leaned over, not wiping the wax away, and _chewed_ it off him.

He spat the wax on the floor and picked up the candle again. He dribbled wax in a line down Remus’s torso, stopping just short of the head of his cock. ‘Does this hurt?’ he asked in a breathy, hoarse voice.

‘Not…not that much,’ Remus admitted. Kingsley drew little circles and patterns in the hardening wax, then once again cleaned Remus’s skin in a series of tiny bites, followed by laving swipes of his tongue.

His cheek brushed Remus’s erection and Remus gasped with pleasure. Kingsley kissed the hairy underside around the base and then worked his shaft once or twice with his hand. ‘Patience, love, patience. Just hold that thought,’ he intoned in his deep bass.

They continued for another half-hour, Kingsley delicately tracing patterns in the wax and alternately licking, wiping, scratching them away from Remus’s flesh, back and front, but avoiding his cock. When he was pink all over with the tiny welts, Kingsley took up the smaller candle again. He held it in front of Remus’s eye. ‘Do you trust me?’ he asked.

‘Can I?’ Remus asked softly.

‘Hold still,’ Kingsley answered, unconcerned with Remus’s doubt, and lowered the candle slowly toward Remus’s cock. A small amount of wax dribbled down the candle, but Kingsley did not let it drip onto the tender flesh below. Instead, he brought the flame closer and closer, until its heat singed Remus’s pubic hair. He gasped and his breath sped up, but he forced himself to hold himself frozen, seeing that if he moved a muscle, he really would burn himself on the flame. The candle flame came close enough to sear just from its heat. His hair curled in on itself, drying up under the onslaught of fire. Kingsley tipped the candle, finally, and wax poured into the limp stretch of sac-skin, between his balls.

‘Ah!’ Remus shouted, and his cock twitched of its own accord. 

‘Shh,’ Kingsley said, licking the wax away. ‘Feel it?’

‘Oh…yes,’ Remus closed his eyes.

‘No. Look at me,’ Kingsley ordered. His eyes fluttered open.

‘Kingsley…’ he pleaded.

‘Not yet,’ Shacklebolt said coldly. He blew cool air onto Remus’s sac. ‘I’m going to make you come just from doing this,’ he announced, and brought the candle back in range.

It took three more applications to Remus’s balls and shaft to make good on Kingsley’s promise. Remus reached for himself, but Kingsley slapped his hands away, and Remus came, his spunk shooting straight into the air like a geyser. Most of it fell onto his chest and stomach, but a fair amount hit Kingsley in the face where he held himself over Remus’s body. Kingsley scraped his face clean, then sucked his fingers. ‘Mm…’ he moaned as he licked his hand, and then he leaned over and licked up Remus’s wet stomach.

Remus sat up bonelessly and pressed his face to Kingsley’s chest. ‘Should I…?’ he asked, but Kingsley pushed him away.

‘No,’ he answered, standing up and coaxing Remus out of his reclined pose. ‘I want you to do me,’ he said.

Remus looked at him in surprise. ‘I’m afraid I’ll botch it,’ he admitted.

‘You shan’t,’ Kingsley assured him. ‘And I don’t care if you do, anyway.’

TBC….


	23. In which Remus is in a tight spot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mortal Coils

Remus woke early Sunday morning to find that almost all the candles had guttered. Two lone stubs and an arrow slit high in the ceiling of the turret room were the only light. Kingsley was sprawled on the magically-widened chaise in a mess of conjured blankets. His perfectly rounded arse cheek poked out of an edge of blanket. Remus tumbled out of the bed and found his wand. ‘ _Lumos_ , he whispered, and his wand tip lit up brightly. He came back to the bed and lifted the covers to slide back in, for warmth. He paused to admire Kingsley. Muscles weren’t the only thing about him that were massive. Remus wasn’t sure how the tiny thong had contained him.

Kingsley shifted in the suddenly cold air. Remus climbed back in next to him, and he draped himself over Remus’s slighter form. Remus summoned his clothes a little closer and brought them into the bed to warm them up.

‘Hey,’ he whispered gently to Kingsley, who was still half-asleep.

‘Hm,’ Kingsley grunted back shyly.

‘I’m gonna go,’ Remus said. He reached down inside the covers for his underwear and slid down to put them on.

‘Nn,’ Kingsley protested, trapping Remus in his legs and arms. ‘Caught you.’

Remus laughed softly. ‘No, I’m going to go,’ he said more definitely. ‘Don’t sleep too much longer; the candles are almost out.

‘Th…window.’ Kingsley pointed up vaguely, head still buried against Remus’s shoulder. ‘Don’t go yet.’

‘I should,’ he said.

‘Why?’

_Because I love Sirius and I don’t dare stay_ , he thought. ‘Because it’s time to go,’ Remus said aloud. His voice echoed in the chamber from his unintentional volume. He pulled his trousers on, still inside the bed. Kingsley grabbed him again; he kissed the other boy a few times on neck and face and full lips before rescuing his shirt and jumper from their warming spot and sliding out of the bed. ‘No, I have to go,’ he insisted when Kingsley followed him across the bed.

‘Want to get together again?’ Kingsley asked. He seemed to expect the answer from his dejected tone.

‘Er, maybe,’ Remus said with a shrug, easing the hem of his jumper over his waist. ‘I wouldn’t object,’ he explained. ‘But I don’t know.’

Kingsley said nothing. Remus thought he might have fallen asleep again. He folded his robes and shirt under his arm and escaped through the passageway. 

‘I love Sirius,’ he reminded himself as he followed the light of his wand tip out to the corridor.

He pushed open the portrait from the back and immediately felt cold along his hands and arms.

‘Bugger off!’ came an angry whisper from the corridor. Remus jumped backward and the portrait slammed closed.

Remus pushed the portrait open again, more tentatively. Again, he had barely opened the portrait a crack when his fingers felt icy cold.

‘I said: Bugger! Off!’ the hoarse, wispy voice barked. Remus backed away from the portrait just in time: a greyish, silver spectre floated through the wall at him. ‘The hell do you want, half-breed?’

Remus suppressed a groan. The apparition had dark silver stains all the way down his robes. Half his legs were stuck in the rock wall of the passage. He wore an ancient-looking sword belt, but carried no sword. His gaunt face and luminous eyes burned with fury. ‘Piss off! What are you doing here, anyway? It’s rude to just barge through a person without so much as a by-your-leave.’

‘Baron,’ Remus choked, trying to avoid touching the ethereal substance in the tight tunnel. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t see you.’

‘Course you didn’t, you daft prat! I’m a ghost!’

‘Yes, of course,’ Remus agreed. He edged toward the portrait. ‘Well, I didn’t mean to disturb. I’ll just be—’

‘Wait!’ the Baron roared. ‘What were you doing back in there?’

‘Oh, er,’ Remus stammered, glancing back at the passageway. ‘I was just…exploring a bit.’

‘Exploring my eye,’ the Baron scoffed. He popped his eye out and held it to Remus’s crotch. ‘You were getting your nuts off, weren’t you?’

‘Er…no, I was sleeping. There’s a room back there—’

‘Course there’s a room there. It was mine. What were you doing in it?’

‘Yours?’ Remus asked with true astonishment. ‘I had no idea. Well, as I said, I fell asleep.’

The Bloody Baron put his eye back into his head. ‘Liar,’ he assessed, but he didn’t seem as angry as he had been. ‘If I were your age, and alive, I’d be shagging anything could hold still long enough.’ He floated into the tunnel, barring the way out from Remus. ‘I remember shagging,’ he sighed. ‘You lot don’t know how good you’ve got it ‘til you’ve snuffed it.’ His tone grew sharper again. ‘Anyway, I don’t like people looking at my things.’

‘I didn’t know—’

‘And especially half-breeds like you.’

Remus bristled. ‘Fine. If you’ll just let me past, I’ll stop troubling you.’

‘Go on then,’ the Baron challenged. ‘Go. What’s stopping you?’

‘You said it’s impolite to walk through ghosts, and I agree with you.’

‘Without permission.’ His lips curled in a cruel smile. ‘I give you permission.’

Remus frowned. He didn’t want to walk through the spirit, but he didn’t want to hang about in a dark, damp tunnel, either. And everyone knew that the worst thing in the world to do was back down before the Bloody Baron. He squared his shoulders. Bracing himself for the momentary sensation of freezing, he broke for the portrait door.

It was like swimming through ice, he thought. His limbs felt too frozen to move. Too late, he realised his mistake. He should have seen that the Baron planned a trap. 

‘I can feel!’ he heard himself cackle. His limbs moved awkwardly, like they belonged to someone who had not used them for a long time. They weren’t the only part of him that had become stiff, either. 

The Baron moved his hands in a slow-motion sort of dance. He felt his icy fingers dip into his trousers. His hand closed around his frozen, stiffened prick. He let out a gasp that was not his. His other hand fondled his nipples, pinching them.

‘Ah,’ the Baron’s voice escaped Remus’s lips. ‘God, yes. Haven’t had a proper wank in over fifty years. Only thing better would be a blow, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever feel that again.’

Remus tried to fight, but the Baron reinforced his hold over the student’s body. ‘Shut up, werewolf. As if you have any right to this pleasure. You should be thanking me. Must have been daft to think you were back there with anyone. Who in their right mind would fuck a werewolf?’

‘Shh,’ Remus managed to hiss out on his own.

‘Why? Is it a secret?’ All the while, the Baron worked Remus’s flesh in a frenzy. Remus began to worry that the Baron might pull his cock right off if he kept up his crude ministration. The cold that at first was ice was seeping into numbness, which wasn’t quite so bad, but he could no longer tell where anything was. He couldn’t tell if he were still standing, leaning against the wall, or down on his knees. He could not feel his fingers anymore, nor his feet. He couldn’t hear his heart beating, couldn’t smell Kingsley or the musty dirt of the tunnel floor. It didn’t hurt, didn’t really feel like anything. Weightlessness, perhaps. But if he looked down, he could see his hands stroking his dick relentlessly, and that sight at least brought with it the surety that he was still alive.

‘Come on, come on,’ the Baron was muttering, and Remus realised he was not talking to _Remus_ , or rather, not to _all_ of Remus. He was talking solely to Remus’s prick.

‘That’s never going to work, you know,’ Remus tried to say, and found that he no longer had control of his jaw. But he _thought_ it, and the Baron apparently heard him nonetheless. 

‘What do you suggest, butter? Lube? I haven’t got all day. It’s not like they’d work any better.’

‘I can’t feel anything like this. Look, stop possessing me, and I’ll figure out a way to do it so we can both feel.’

The Baron’s grip stilled in Remus’s hand. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said slowly.

‘Is this working for you?’ Remus asked.

‘No.’

‘Well, then. Try something else,’ Remus reasoned.

The Baron shifted forward, and suddenly Remus’s body flooded with warmth and feeling again. Pins and needles attacked every pore of his body, as if every part of him had gone to sleep and was suddenly able to circulate blood again. He’d felt this kind of all-over itch before: in the week it took after his werewolf bite to adjust to the changes in his blood. That feeling had been horrible, a thousand fire ants crawling over every inch of flesh, underneath the skin. This was merely an annoyance and an unpleasant memory.

‘Right,’ he said, shaking his hands to get the feeling back in them. ‘You can’t touch me, and I can’t have you put your hand inside mine without losing feeling.’ _And Kingsley’s going to come find out what’s going on any minute,_ he thought desperately. ‘Can we go out someplace where there’s more light? The classroom, maybe?’

‘Here,’ the Baron insisted. ‘Not having any of the others see me relying on a bloody lycanthrope for my jollies.’

‘Er, okay,’ Remus conceded. ‘Why don’t you try it with other ghosts?’ he asked innocently. 

The Baron levelled a blood-curdling sneer at him. ‘Because _sonny_ , it doesn’t work like that, either.’ He muttered on, as he came closer and closer to Remus’s face. ‘Anyway, who would you have me fuck? The Grey Lady in her Virginal Purity? That horrid Myrtle child? Think the Fat Friar’s all that attractive, do you? And even if Mimsey-Porpington’s a sodding fairy, I wouldn’t let that skin-graft of a Gryffindor near my jewels for all the gold in Christendom!’

Remus gulped. When the Baron was in a mood, like this, he could understand how he could control even Peeves. ‘Well, I was just trying to help,’ he said by way of apology. ‘I’m not trying to…to scarper off,’ he continued in a placating tone. ‘Er. I think maybe if…if you just put your hand _near_ mine…’ he thought aloud. The Baron stretched his hand and hovered bare millimetres away from where Remus worked his head with thumb and forefinger. 

‘No,’ the Baron announced a few seconds later, and Remus had to agree with him, though he really wanted to simply be done with it. The Baron plunged his hand between Remus’s legs. Remus wanted to scream from the abrupt cold, but seconds later, he began to tremble for another reason entirely. The Baron raised his hand to Remus’s free wrist and Remus felt it floating forward toward the Baron’s codpiece. Remus’s wand fell to the ground, but still shed cold white light that made the Baron’s shape glow in the darkness. Into that glowing essence when his hand. It closed around thin, cold air, but somehow he knew the heat he put out was positioned strategically. 

‘Yes,’ the Baron encouraged him. ‘Yes. Now touch yourself,’ he ordered, and Remus pumped both hands for all he was worth. ‘I can’t keep this up for long, boy – Don’t make such long strokes – Yes! That’s it…fill me with your living warmth….’ The Baron writhed in mid-air. Remus clenched his fingers in an O and held them practically still, allowing the Baron to float inside their circle again and again and again. He continued to squeeze his own cock, praying that ghosts could still come and that he could escape before Kingsley blundered upon them.

After what seemed like an age, Remus felt the spasm deep in his glands and he spurted into the air. A few drops of hot liquid seared through the translucent form of the Baron. This heat, combined with his motion against Remus’s hand, finally did the trick. His semen shot out in a pearly-white and silver stream that landed cold and then melted like snowflakes wherever it landed. 

Remus’s hand was red and felt like ice when he clutched it to his chest for warmth. He sank to his knees for his wand. A cleaning spell and a warming charm later, and Remus was tucking himself back into his trousers. The Baron still floated near the ceiling on his back. ‘Ahhhh,’ he sighed long and contentedly. ‘That was gooood.’ He looked over at Remus suspiciously. ‘If I find out that you’re going around saying you’ve brought me off….’

‘Trust me, I shan’t,’ Remus said quickly, and made for the portrait door. ‘But if you want more, there _is_ someone back there you could ask!’ He ducked into the corridor and let the portrait bang closed behind him, laughing over the Baron’s furious roar.

TBC….


	24. In which Remus gets the hang of something new

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Restraining Orders

A few days later, just when Remus thought things might be returning to normal, he had one of the most incredible experiences of his young life. And considering the year he’d been having, that was saying something.

He was on his way from Defence Against the Dark Arts to Advanced Transfiguration – neither of which he could never look at quite the same way again – when he felt something slip in his bag. Before he knew it, his bag was considerably lighter, and all its contents were strewn across the hallway. He whipped around, wand out and ready, but only caught a glimpse of non-descript robes turning a corner.

‘It was Regulus!’ Sirius growled. ‘Reg, and that damn Barty Crouch. James—’

‘Yeah, I’ll get it,’ James said, rushing after them. They heard him yell as to stop them.

‘ _Reparo_ ’ Remus muttered at his bag. The seams patched themselves loosely. ‘Damn. I think this bag’s about done for,’ he said, squatting to collect his books and things. ‘Ought to do until we can get to Hogsmeade, though, I suppose.’ 

He and Sirius scooped up his stuff, ignoring the looks from younger students who stepped around them. Then a pair of girls began screaming.

‘What the—’ they said to one another, looking up. Remus turned utterly white. Katherine O’Malley, Eudora Nestor, and Jocasta Stalk were holding up a very familiar item, one he had quite forgotten had been in his pack at all.

He rose, trying to think of some explanation. But before he could open his mouth, things got so, so much worse. He heard the insistent meowing of a particularly maddening cat. Mrs Norris trotted over to the mess on the floor, looked at the girls with their discovery, and yowled. 

‘Look, it’s just a—’

‘Well, well,’ Mr Filch smirked as he closed in on the little group. ‘What have we here, then, ay?’

‘Mr Filch, his bag fell apart—’ Sirius began.

‘—And he had _this_!’ Jocasta crowed. ‘It’s a disgusting Muggle brochure, Mr Filch! Just _look_ at this! It’s…pornographic!’

The surrounding students alternately gasped, giggled, or worst, tried to see. Several shot Remus looks of thorough contempt. A few looked embarrassed or sympathetic. Many decided that they should be elsewhere as soon as possible.

Filch took the catalogue from Jocasta and flipped through it, stone-faced. Remus put a steadying hand on Sirius’s arm, lest he make their situation more distressing.

‘Contraband,’ Filch pronounced toothily. ‘Go on, then,’ he barked at the onlookers. ‘Get on to your lessons!’ 

When the three girls, Sirius, and Remus were the only ones left in the hallway, Filch spoke again. ‘Have you any possible explanation, Mr Lupin?’

Remus shook his head. ‘I forgot it was in there,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I meant to get rid of it—’

‘Sure you did,’ Filch sneered knowingly. ‘Well. Detention, then. Come with me, Lupin,’ he ordered, and Remus, helpless to protest, followed in his wake. As they marched away, Remus could hear Sirius trying to appease the three young ladies.

He trailed behind Filch down to the man’s office. Mrs Norris had evidently gone back to patrolling the halls, content now that her master had taken the offender into custody. 

‘Always knew there were something queer about you, Lupin,’ Filch commented as he opened the door to his office and pointed for Remus to enter.

Remus said nothing and took his seat in front of the great desk. He knew from experience that the best way to deal with Filch’s storms was to let them blow themselves out.

‘If I went up to the Gryffindor dormitory,’ Filch mused, ‘and cleaned out your trunks, drawers, and cupboards, right this minute, what do you suppose I might find there?’ He settled himself in the chair behind the desk, unrolled the catalogue, and began to flip through it again. ‘Dear, oh dear,’ he continued, clucking his tongue against his overlarge front teeth. ‘We _are_ the randy little thing, ain’t we?’ He paged through at a leisurely pace, and Remus began to think he would scrutinise every page in front of the student before naming the punishment. ‘Like this, do you?’ he accused, thrusting an open page of the catalogue at Remus. 

Remus leaned forward to look. The page depicted a large selection of vibrators. He recognised the realistic one that Andromeda had favoured over the holiday. ‘Not really, Mr Filch,’ he said truthfully. ‘Those are for girls,’ he added, hoping to make it seem more innocent.

Filch was not amused. He seemed to take Remus’s statement as a correction, as if he didn’t know what the dildos were for. ‘Is that so?’ he asked icily, and went back to reading the catalogue. ‘None of those up in your room, then?’ Under other circumstances, it would have been comical. Filch hurled accusations at Remus as if cross-examining him, proclaiming more than probing for answers. Remus kept his face neutral and merely said ‘No’ whenever required.

‘What about these, then?’ Filch asked, handing the catalogue over once more. Remus peered down. It was the page with all the bondage gear, including the intricate web of straps that had prompted Remus to keep the catalogue in the first place, however inadvertently. 

‘I…I…’ he stammered, trying to deny with a straight face that the page excited him.

‘So!’ Filch crowed. ‘I think I know exactly what punishment to assign to you, then.’ He reached into a drawer and pulled out a brass skeleton key. ‘Use this in the door behind you,’ he instructed, handing Remus the key. ‘Shut the door behind you, face the wall, and don’t turn around until I come in.’

‘Mr Filch, I have a lesson—’

‘Oh, your lesson will just have to wait,’ Filch told him.

The many times Remus had been in Filch’s office, usually with at least one of the other Marauders with him, he had always wondered about the door. It was to the left of the fireplace, but it was always closed. Peter had reasoned that it was Filch’s private quarters, but Sirius had bet a thousand Galleons that it was the room where Filch kept all the torture equipment he always threatened to use on students. Everyone knew that the Headmaster had put a stop to centuries of corporal punishment and that Filch was livid to have lost his most potent leverage against the students. Even seven years later, he was known to grumble constantly about the way his methods had been dismissed, and how he itched to get his hands onto the errant inhabitants of Hogwarts.

Remus fitted the key in the lock and it turned as if well-oiled. He opened the door and went in, closing it behind him. It clicked with finality. Remus tried the knob, but it would not budge. He turned and looked around.

The bet was a draw, he realised. Peter and Sirius were both right. The room had obviously been a torture chamber. Manacles and chains hung on the walls from giant iron rings. An Iron Maiden stood in one corner, and a complicated rack-sort-of-device took up most of one wall, along with a veritable tool-shed of knives, saws, pokers, tongs, whips, and other assorted implements Remus did not wish to contemplate. But it was undoubtedly also a bedroom. A massive four-poster with black curtains, three times the size of their dormitory beds, occupied the absolute centre of the room. A wardrobe was set next to the iron cage. Personal items littered the mantelpiece, which clearly opened onto the same fireplace in Filch’s office on the other side of that wall. A mirror hung above it, tilted out from the wall at an angle toward the foot of the bed.

‘What in Merlin’s name is Dumbledore _thinking_ , letting this man work here?’ Remus said aloud. ‘Barmy old madman,’ he muttered. But Filch’s instructions had left no room for arguing, and it seemed his room knew it. The door _pushed_ him toward the middle of the room. Remus shook his head, reminding himself that Dumbledore was many things, but reckless was not one of them, and walked to the nearest open spot of wall. Here at least he could see the door, possibly duck out if Filch returned with murder on his mind. But apparently the walls were bewitched to expect this: He felt the same sensation of being _pushed_ away. No way was he going near any of the actual instruments, including any of the weapons, so he worked his way along to the far wall, between the wardrobe and the door to what he assumed was a bath. He was allowed to stand there, it seemed. He could see himself in the mirror at its funny angle.

He stood there for what seemed like forever. A few times he leaned his head against the stones, only to be _pushed_ upright again. He unlocked his knees to sway back and forth, side to side, to ease the feeling that he might fall over. All the while, he thought about the torture devices currently facing his back. Was Filch just going to scare him? Did he actually think he could get away with laying hands – or whips, or whatever – on a student?

He heard the lock click. The door swung open and Remus tried to look into the mirror to see Filch’s approach. Somehow he knew better than to turn around. He recognised Filch’s worn boots, but behind him tapped a pair of shiny black stilettos that hugged the legs inside them...up and up beyond the wearer’s knees.

‘Mr Filch tells me you are quite the little rapscallion, Mr Lupin,’ a witch’s voice, velvety and mocking, said behind his back. ‘He seems to think you need a bit of a lesson.’

Remus couldn’t believe what he was hearing. What was she doing down here?

‘Turn around, Mr Lupin,’ she commanded. Remus obeyed without thinking. The wolf in him knew dominance, and this voice had it. He turned and confirmed the voice’s identity: Professor Sinistra stood before him in Filch’s room. But it was a Sinistra like he had never seen before. Instead of the prim robes and wide-brimmed hat, she was dressed in a leather corset, the thigh-high leather boots, and very little in between. ‘Mr Lupin, you are seventeen years of age, is that not correct?’ The perfunctory tone was exactly the same, however.

‘Yes, Professor,’ Remus answered, glancing nervously from her to Filch.

‘Good. Then our game will be legal,’ she told him, and smiled. ‘Argus, bring us some refreshments for later,’ she asked him sweetly. Filch looked about to protest, but Sinistra cut it off by saying ‘Now,’ in the same Voice. Filch left them, and she turned back into the sweet, young professor Remus was used to. ‘Have a seat, Remus,’ she invited him breezily, as if they were having tea. She perched on the edge of Filch’s bed and patted the mattress next to her. ‘It’s perfectly safe, I assure you.’

Remus shuffled to the bed, but hesitated to sit where Argus Filch slept. ‘Professor...is this some sort of joke?’

‘It needn’t be,’ Professor Sinistra said to him. ‘Argus tells me you had a certain catalogue from...ah... _Sensual Sorcery_? And that you seemed to react very favourably to a particular set of items used for bondage and domination. Is that true?’

‘Well, you see the thing is, Professor--’ Remus began to say.

‘It’s all right, Remus. You don’t have to explain why you had it. Believe it or not, you’re not exactly in as much trouble as Argus would like you to believe.’ She batted her lashes prettily.

‘I’m...not?’ Remus repeated.

‘Of course not. Do sit down, you’ll put a crick in my neck.’

Remus sat warily. ‘But...if it’s not really contraband....’

‘Really, Mr Lupin,’ Sinistra said in her “Professor” voice, ‘I expected better of you. There’s nothing illegal in that catalogue, or even about using anything from that firm. But clearly it takes an adventurous, mature spirit to put them to use properly. It’s not something we want students experimenting with it on their own. They might get hurt.’

Remus watched her blankly. ‘But...then...what are you....’

‘I should think that would be obvious, Remus,’ Sinistra said, leaning in with lots of cleavage. ‘I believe you’re involved with Mr Black, aren’t you?’ she asked confidentially. ‘So don’t think I expect you to feel any attraction to me. In fact, it’s better that way. But if you really liked what you saw, Remus, then I could help you discover a whole world of pleasure you’ve hardly dreamed of, teach you things you could share with your lover later, in your own way. You don’t know how rare it is for us to find someone in your perfect situation, Remus: On the cusp of your breakthrough, but with no danger of falling in love with someone who is still technically your professor.’

‘When you say “us,” you mean....’

‘Oh, Argus talks a mean game,’ she said, snickering, ‘but really, he just likes to watch.’

‘Professor--’

‘Call me Aurora,’ she said brightly.

‘Er...Professor, are you seriously suggesting that we...that I....’

‘Yes, dear. I’m suggesting that I can teach you things about your desires you never knew you felt. I wouldn’t offer this to you were the circumstances not so auspicious. But I don’t wish to do anything you don’t want to do. You must decide, Remus.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes. You see right now, everyone believes you are serving a detention with Argus. It would be difficult to arrange another appointment so artlessly.’

‘I don’t want to be tortured,’ Remus said quickly. ‘I don’t like pain.’

‘All right. There’s a lot we can do without inflicting pain.’

‘You’re very...different.’

‘Well, that’s the beauty of persona-play, darling.’

‘I mean...if it weren’t for all this,’ Remus looked around the room and made a vague gesture toward her outfit, ‘I’d think you were a normal - I mean a nice person. I mean--’

Aurora Sinistra laughed delicately. ‘But I am nice, Remus. I don’t have to be mean to be a dominatrix.’

‘You shan’t do anything I don’t want?’

‘No. Have you read about safewords?’

‘I...think so. It’s a word or a phrase that stops the scene right away.’

‘That’s right. We’ll give you a safeword. If you don’t like what we’re doing, you just go right ahead and say it. We’ll stop immediately.’

‘And, will Mr Filch....’

‘Oh, he’ll probably watch, but don’t worry. He’s nowhere near as dangerous as he likes people to think. He’s just a big kitten.’

Remus’s expression eloquently noted his doubt. Sinistra laughed again. ‘If you don’t want to do this, there’s no harm done,’ she told him. ‘I’m very good at memory charms.’

Remus thought about the bondage gear in the catalogue again. He looked into Sinistra’s - Aurora’s - eyes. She didn’t flinch, and what was more, she smelled honest. 

‘Let’s give it a go,’ Remus said with a deep breath.

Sinistra clapped her hands with delight. ‘Oh, excellent!’ she said. ‘Right. Let’s assign you a safeword. What will you remember?’

‘Godric Gryffindor,’ Remus said in a strange voice, remembering the very phrase he had provided to Bill Weasley just a few weeks earlier. 

‘That ought to do nicely. Good. And you’ll need your wardrobe.’ She produced her wand from the centre of her corset. ‘ _Accio!_ ’ A zippered mask flew out of a dresser drawer toward them and she caught it. ‘I don’t want to take you too far too quickly. But is there something you saw in this,’ she pulled the catalogue seemingly out of the air, ‘that you’d like to investigate?’

Remus accepted the catalogue with reverence or trepidation, depending on the moment. He trusted her, strange as her dual personality appeared, but the incongruity of it all just struck him as odd. He half-expected Professors McGonagall or Dumbledore to burst through the door at any moment, to sack Sinistra and Filch on the spot for even suggesting this activity, and to expel him for taking part in it. Then too, trying out bondage with Professor Sinistra was one thing. She was young, pretty, and currently nice. She had always been fair in class. Filch, on the other hand....

He flipped open the catalogue and found the pages he sought. ‘I don’t even know how one wears that,’ he confided, pointing to the strap contraption. ‘But...what about, er, that?’ He put his finger under a photograph of a less confining model.

‘Mm...’ Sinistra said, looking at the picture. ‘That’s rather advanced. Why don’t we start a bit more free-form? Tell you what: You get undressed and back up in front of the wall and wait. We’ll get there.’

‘Un....’

‘You don’t expect to do this with your clothes on? And...let’s skip this for now,’ she said, running the mask through her hands. ‘We’ll just see how things go.’

‘All right....’

‘Now, Remus, there’s one more thing you’ll need to know: Once I come back in, we’ll be in the scene, right? No more Miss Nice Witch. And no calling me by name.’

Remus, who hadn’t called her by name once, nodded.

‘Don’t be surprised.’

‘No, I.... That part’s okay, I think.’

‘Splendid,’ she beamed. ‘Okay, I’ll give you a few minutes to get cooking.’ She stalked around the bed toward the door, unlocking it with her wand. ‘Oh, and Remus? No touching yourself, understand?’

Remus shuddered. He had once played that very trick on Sirius, and now the tables were turned. He stood up and tried the other door. It was, in fact, a bath. Not knowing quite why, he went inside, shut the door, and undressed there, folding his clothes carefully and stacking them on the counter. He padded back out, wincing at the cold bite of the flagstone floor against his bare feet. He resumed his position facing the wall, but this time, as he waited, his anticipation grew in excess of his fear.

He heard the lock click. The door swung open and Remus tried to look into the mirror to see Sinistra’s approach. He knew better than to turn around before given permission. He recognised the shiny black stilettos and behind them, Filch’s worn and scuffed boots.

‘Mr Filch tells me you are quite the little rapscallion, Mr Lupin,’ she said again in the same mocking tone she had used on her first entrance. ‘He seems to think you need a bit of a lesson.’

Remus stood still. Thoughts about his nakedness, her proximity, and the unwanted observer filled his mind. His hands wandered down toward his crotch - not to touch, but to cover.

‘Turn around, Mr Lupin,’ she commanded.

Remus obeyed without question, but he left his hands in place like fig leaves. 

‘Hands at your sides. Did I tell you to cover up?’

‘No, ma’am.’ It seemed the natural thing to call her.

‘Well, do you think you need to be taught a lesson?’

‘Yes, ma’am, I suppose so,’ he said softly.

‘Speak up!’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he repeated more forcefully.

Sinistra clicked her tongue. ‘Mr Filch would string you up by your ankles,’ she said, ‘but he’s not allowed to use torture on students. Dumbledore’s orders. I, on the other hand, have no such injunction. Should I string you up by your ankles?’

Remus had a feeling it was a rhetorical question. He remained silent, and a few seconds later she continued.

‘I have a better idea for you, Mr Lupin. Hold out your wrists.’

Remus complied. Sinistra conjured a set of leather manacles. She buckled them around his wrists securely but not tight enough to cut into his flesh. Remus tested the tensile strength; he could probably break them if he really wanted, but it would hurt. A lot.

‘Now stay put,’ Sinistra said and clacked across the floor to the entrance. She opened the door. ‘Mr Filch, if you please?’ 

Filch came in eagerly, gawking at Remus like a child taking in the sight of Christmas presents under the tree.

‘Filch, put him on the harness,’ Sinistra told him. Filch shambled forward and grasped the leather strap connecting Remus’s wrists. He tugged roughly and led Remus to the bed. Remus hesitated. ‘Up you get,’ Sinistra told him expectantly. Remus climbed the short step-ladder and stood on the mattress. Sinistra flicked her wand and the leather manacles flew over his head. His arms stretched helplessly to follow his wrists. The strap hung itself on a hook at the centre of the bed’s canopy frame. Remus had to balance on his toes to keep his shoulders from stretching painfully.

‘Hm,’ Sinistra walked slowly in a circle around the bed while Filch backed away to perch against the rack. ‘It’s a start. Still, I don’t think this really imparts any sort of message, do you, Argus? No.’ She opened the wardrobe and pulled out several long silk scarves. ‘After all, Lupin here is a prefect. He should know better. And his offence is so very, very naughty. Isn’t it, Mr Lupin? Seems to me that he should learn some restraint.’ She tapped the mattress with her wand. It turned to wood. She walked up the step-ladder and onto the wood slats, wrapping the scarves around her hand. ‘Goodness, he’s excited, Filch! Are you enjoying this, Lupin?’ She unwrapped a scarf and draped it around his neck, between his head and arms. The fringed ends tickled his buttocks and he tried not to twitch. ‘Answer me, young man,’ Sinistra said sharply.

‘No, ma’am,’ Remus said tentatively. What was he supposed to say?

‘I think you’re lying,’ Sinistra said with narrowing eyes. She brought the scarf back around under Remus’s front. His field of vision was reduced to her corseted bosom and he felt a tug under his shoulders. Then she walked behind him again and pulled down on the scarf. The strain on his wrists in the leather straps was replaced by a pressure against his throat and under his shoulders. ‘I don’t like lying, Mr Lupin,’ she whispered in his ear while he choked against the scarf.

She dropped him a few seconds later. He felt the jerk against his wrists as the leather took his weight again, his toes returned to the floor and he gasped for air.

‘We’ll just leave that there, in case you misbehave again,’ Sinistra told him. She unwrapped the second scarf and hooked it behind one knee. She tied a knot just at the base of his thigh, loose enough to allow him some room to move, but tight enough to keep him from slipping out, and then lifted the ends to another hook, this one near the corner of the canopy. Remus’s leg raised off the floor, leaving him only the one foot to balance on, spreading his hips like a sort of sexual traction harness. 

‘In the old days, Mr Lupin, convicts were drawn and quartered. Do you know how that is done?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Remus answered. Did she really mean to simulate it?

Sinistra unwound a third scarf and put a knot in the middle. She ran the knot across his back, under his arse where the angle of his leg pulled his cheeks apart, and around his other cheek to his hard and waiting cock. She touched the knot to the tip of his penis, using his pre-come to wet the fabric a tiny bit. Then she held the scarf taut on either side of the knot, the dab of liquid facing Remus. ‘This is my lecture, Mr Lupin, and if you cannot remain silent, I shall make you. Open your mouth.’

Remus again found himself responding to the tone of dominance that spoke directly to his wolf. He had a choice: to fight or obey. Hanging from his wrists, one leg suspended in the air, his chances of fighting were slim. Besides, he wanted to continue. Thinking it made him realise it was true, and he relaxed his lips and let them part. Sinistra jammed the knot against his tongue. He could taste his own liquids mingled with the dusty dryness of the fabric as it forced his tongue down. Sinistra jerked the gag tight against his jaw and tied it closed roughly. Again, he felt the slight tickle of fringe against the small of his back.

‘Horses, or sometimes oxen, were chained to a man’s limbs and made to walk slowly outward from his body. As they did, his arms and legs were stretched until the joints dislocated, the flesh tore, and the muscle utterly detached from him.’ She unwound a fourth scarf, knotted it above his other knee. ‘I think you’ll agree my methods are more humane, if no less effective.’ She pulled up and his foot left the former mattress. He hung from three points, now, and he was gagged beside. 

‘Now, I don’t have to ask whether you’ll repeat the offence that caused you to come under Mr Filch’s care, do I? No, I don’t.’ She climbed down from the wood slats and crossed back to the wardrobe. ‘We’ll let you think about this for a minute or two. Filch, a glass of sherry, if you please.’

Filch went out to fetch her drink, but on his way, he pushed Remus’s waist. Remus swung gently, side to side, like a hairless sloth on a bizarre tree branch. By the time Filch returned with a small service table and a tray holding a decanter and two glasses, Remus had stopped swinging. The absurdity of it made him want to laugh, but he simply watched her, waiting for her next move.

‘Let’s see if our goose is cooked, shall we?’ she asked Filch after a sip or two of sherry. She picked her way back onto the bed, this time with her hands full of something she had taken from the wardrobe that Remus couldn’t identify. She uncoiled it for him slowly – it was a very long strap of leather with a number of loops sewn onto it. She began to wrap it around his pelvis and under his back, looping it through the loops at various points, tightening here and loosening there as necessary. It felt like a cross between a diaper and a climbing harness, and again, Remus suppressed the urge to laugh. The harness wound between his legs and cris-crossed all around his dick, leaving it sticking straight up through the layers of leather. The edges of the leather rubbed the base of his cock as they moved, somewhere between sharp and soft. He wondered if she had used magic to make it work like that, or if the strap was magical all by itself. All the while, she lectured him.

‘You like playing with the idea of nasty little toys, Lupin, because you like most of your fellow Gryffindors are foolhardy. You think your bravery can see you through any situation. Do you think Death Eaters are going to play games before they kill you? You’re right: they will. Only their games will be nowhere near as pleasant for you as even this. They will see to it that you are broken before you are killed. Only if you understand what you can take—’ she clamped a ring onto the leather harness, now covering his lower body and holding his penis perpendicular to his abdomen— ‘will you know how to withstand their assaults.’

She threaded another strong piece of leather, this one with another d-ring on one end, through the ring she had used to secure his harness. She buckled the tether in place and added the end of it to the same hook his wrists were on, arching his back in the process and straightening his legs. Then she eased the leather manacles off the hook, dropping his arms above his head. Finally, she pulled his arms back and he felt, rather than saw, her tie them off on the other end of the canopy. He was stretched in mid-air. He could feel air flowing through the crack in his arse and realised that somehow, she had tied the harness so that it held his cheeks apart. The weave of leather around his cock was tight enough to serve as a cock-ring as well, pressing his balls to his crotch and preventing blood flow and early ejaculation.

Sinistra ran one nail along the underside of his harness, scratching a thin line up the seam of flesh to his anus and then over the edge of each cheek. He felt her wand tip touch him and then probe slightly, shooting lubricant into his hole. ‘Filch, number three, if you please,’ Sinistra called out, like a Muggle surgeon requesting a scalpel. Filch jumped up from his perch and rummaged in a drawer in the wardrobe. He drew out the selected instrument with a sigh of success and brought it to the step-stool. He sat on the wooden floor that used to be his bed, ensuring a good angle for the next phase. His fly was open.

‘Breathe in when I tell you and push out when I say,’ Sinistra said to Remus, who nodded. She maintained eye contact as her fingers pulled the ring of muscle open. ‘Breathe,’ she ordered, and Remus sucked in a breath around the gag. ‘Push!’ Remus pushed out as she plunged a large, round object into his arse. It felt like another man’s dick. Perhaps a dildo? He had not got a good enough look at it to be sure. 

Sinistra impaled him on the false cock a few times while Remus screamed through his gag. Then she walked under his legs to stand between them, but did not remove the dildo. ‘Keep it there,’ she instructed, and Remus clenched his buttocks to comply. 

Sinistra reached through his spread legs to his nipples and pulled up on them. Remus pulled against his arm restraints to rise up, but could not follow far. She pinched them between her nails and pulled the skin away from his chest. When she let go, they were red with white half-moons where her nails had bit the flesh. She repeated the action a few more times until Remus was whimpering madly, begging even though he could not speak around the saliva-soaked gag.

‘No,’ Sinistra said simply. She drove the dildo in a bit more before dragging the silk that held up one leg all the way down to his ankle and off. His leg fell to the ground, but could not touch because of the harness holding him. He had to clench around the dildo again to keep from losing it. She released his other leg, and it dropped, too, putting greater strain on his arms and arching his back again. She untied his arms and he cantilevered upward, now suspended entirely by the harness, which pressed his balls and rubbed his cock base and stretched his buttocks. She _must_ have spelled it somehow for the effect – a normal harness would simply ride up everywhere, he thought. He gingerly bent his elbows and brought his wrists back down over his head, holding on to the harness strap with both hands. 

Sinistra clucked in mock sympathy and grabbed up the silk scarf around his neck again. She brought the ends back around to his front and tied them around his arms to the strap. ‘How does that feel?’ she asked simply. Remus closed his eyes to keep himself from crying. He needed to come! He could feel it, but he was sore and spent and so bound up he didn’t think he’d ever be able to bring himself over the precipice to completion.

‘Look at me,’ Sinistra told him. His eyes snapped open and he used them to beg. ‘No stamina, Lupin. None at all. You’ll be easy prey for the Death Eaters.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, all right, then.’

She put her hands on both his shoulders and twisted, left pushing forward, right pulling back. She twisted him up on the strap as if she were turning him before a piñata, as if he were a swing she wanted to spin inside. When the strap was coiled tightly around itself as much as it would go, she popped the dildo out of his arse cheeks and let him spin. Remus shut his eyes tight and rode out the pirouettes. His awareness narrowed to the way the harness rubbed against his cock. He opened his eyes and looked down at his penis. He was still whirling around, now twisting up the strap in the other direction, but his dick gave him a fixed point and the rest of his peripheral vision was just a blur. 

He spun all the way in one direction, slowed, and stopped. Sinistra squeezed his shaft and then let him go to spin out the other way. The harness rubbed and squeezed and as he slowed again, he felt Sinistra catch his legs with the silks again. But this time, she did not stretch him toward the corners of the bed; instead, she pushed his knees toward his chest, folding him in half. His cock stuck out between his legs, knees pressed to his shoulders. She tied him into place efficiently and rubbed his shaft against the taut strap, then set him spinning again. Between the harness itself, his bug-like position, and the constant slap of his cock against the twisting leather, he spurted hot and hard. Semen spattered all over the room, the bed frame, Sinistra’s corset, and even Filch’s hair. 

‘Like a fly in a web, dear,’ Sinistra told him with a wagging finger. ‘You’ll need to build up more resistance. Perhaps we should leave you to hang there like that all night? Should we? No? Well, a few minutes at least. Give you time to think about how you’ll respond to real torture.’ She climbed down and turned the floor back into a mattress, leaving Remus utterly tangled in his own limbs. ‘Come, Argus, you can clean yourself in the office.’ Remus looked over and saw, for the first time, that Filch had brought himself off during the encounter. The caretaker tucked his dick back into his trousers, buttoned them, and followed her out, scowling.

Remus closed his eyes and relaxed into the bonds. He was still swinging just a bit, but in this foetal position, with his immediate need satisfied, he felt strangely limp and safe. He was just drifting off when he heard the door open again. Sinistra, alone once more, came in and using her wand, untied him, lifted the leather strap off the hook, and lowered him gently to the mattress. She removed his gag and sat on the edge of the bed to disassemble the harness.

‘Well, what did you think?’ she asked him as she eased the straps away from his flesh.

‘It was…interesting. I didn’t like Filch being there.’

Sinistra nodded. ‘Well, there’s no harm in him, really. But mainly I let him in because it’s good to have a witness who can attest that nothing permanently damaging was done.’

‘I…. What you said earlier, about being able to take what I learn home to Sirius….’

‘I shouldn’t try anything this advanced with him just yet. You two could get hurt.’

‘I know…but…I think perhaps we should just figure it out on our own. Bit by bit.’

Sinistra looked vaguely disappointed. ‘You didn’t like it?’

‘No, I did,’ Remus insisted, sitting up. ‘I just…if anyone’s going to see me like that, I’d want it to be Sirius.’

‘Ah.’ Sinistra stood up and brought him his clothes from the bathroom. ‘We can arrange that, you know.’

If she hadn’t been his teacher, Remus thought he might kiss her right then and there.

TBC….


	25. In which Remus loses his mind

Remus told Professor Sinistra – Aurora, as she reminded him he could call her outside of class – that he wouldn’t try anything dangerous with Sirius without her around to help. But Sirius insisted that they were for all practical purposes fully qualified wizards, and that anything she could do with a wand, either of them could handily reproduce if not improve. Remus doubted this was exactly true, but he was eager to share his experiences with, and most importantly, _on_ , Sirius. Luckily, Peter was able to produce a second catalogue and they sent away from some mundane gear immediately.

‘We can add it to the catalogue once we’re better at it,’ Sirius justified further as they took their order into Hogsmeade one Saturday shortly thereafter. 

After they climbed back out of the tunnel behind the one-eyed witch, they turned the corner to see Katherine O’Malley and a few of her friends talking by a window. 

‘Better get cracking on our Magical Theory projects,’ Lucy Sterns was saying. ‘Fifteen rolls of parchment by end of term.’

Sirius sucked his teeth. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he murmured, frowning.

‘You haven’t started yours yet?’ Remus hissed at him. ‘Honestly, Sirius….’

‘Cheers, Remus, it’s fine. I’ll think of something. You’ll help.’

‘What makes you think—’ Remus began, but Katherine saw them arguing.

‘Remus, I’ve been meaning to talk to you,’ she called as she walked over. ‘Would you be giving me a bit o’yer time, then?’

‘Oh, er, of course, Katherine.’ He shot Sirius an exasperated look and escorted her down the corridor a few paces. ‘Look, if this is about that brochure I had the other day….’

‘That ‘tis, but it won’t be what you’re thinking ‘tis,’ Katherine told him in her lilting brogue. ‘I know the other girls were, well, a bit ashamed to see it, but I thought it was sort of funny, d’ye see?’

‘Not really,’ Remus admitted. ‘But I’m glad you weren’t offended.’

‘Not at all. But that brings me to what I wanted to be talking to yer about. I was hoping…well, what I mean to ask of ye is….’

‘Katherine, would you like to go on a date, sometime?’ Remus asked politely.

She beamed. ‘Yer a proper gentleman, Remus. That I would.’

They chatted and fixed on an evening they were free, and then they came back to the small group of her friends, who had absorbed Sirius into their conversation.

‘You could do experimental magic,’ Jonathan Harker was telling Sirius. ‘There’s loads of room to make stuff up.’

‘Yeah, good point!’ Sirius answered brightly. Remus rolled his eyes. ‘Hey, John says I should make it all up.’

‘That’s _not_ what he said, you git.’ Remus shook his head at him. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

‘Where?’

‘To the library. You’re starting on this now.’

‘But I can’t take any books out.’

‘You can’t; but I can.’ Remus dragged him down the corridor and into the library.

Several hours later they emerged with a number of tomes, after Remus swore to Madam Pince that he would not allow Sirius to use them unsupervised. They hauled their armloads of books to the Common Room and Remus settled in to force Sirius to do his homework.

‘Moony, look!’ Sirius shouted, pointing to a page excitedly. ‘Look at this!’

Remus sighed, sat up, and leaned over Sirius’s shoulder to read the page. ‘Experimental _sex_ magic?!’ he squeaked, eyes bugging.

‘Yeah,’ Sirius agreed. ‘And there’s instructions! Come on, let’s try.’ He grabbed Remus by the hand and made for the stairs.

‘Sirius, no! You’re going to sit down and find a topic.’

‘I just did; now come on and let’s try some of this stuff!’ Sirius tucked the book under his arm.

‘Sirius….’

‘Yes?’

Remus gave him the look. Sirius frowned and sat dolefully. ‘You never let me have any fun.’ Remus scoffed, but Sirius dog-eared the page and moved on.

‘I didn’t say you couldn’t _write_ about it,’ Remus whispered a moment later. 

‘Okay! Now we’re talking!’ Sirius crowed and began to make copious notes.

 

The next morning, Remus woke to find Sirius standing over him, holding his wand. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Padfoot?’ Remus asked.

Except, he didn’t ask. He yipped. He looked up at Padfoot. Why was Padfoot on two legs? He smelled like Padfoot, Remus thought, leaning over to sniff Padfoot’s crotch. Only he wasn’t as hairy. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked again. Except, it came out as a bark and a yip – again.

He launched out of bed at Padfoot, frustrated and unsure why. He bowled Padfoot over onto the next bed, snuffled at his armpits and neck where the scents were strong. For some reason, Padfoot’s groin was covered with cloth. He pulled at the waistband with his teeth.

Padfoot scrambled backward and got onto all fours and said something forcefully. Remus reared and cuffed him with one paw. He dragged Padfoot’s head under his hand and bent forward to catch Padfoot’s neck in his jaws.

Another two-legged creature who smelled not exactly like Prongs barked at Padfoot. Which was strange, because Prongs usually didn’t bark. Padfoot barked back, and somehow he could comprehend it as language.

‘He’s locked in his wolf-mind, I think. Trying to dominate. Help me get him off!’

Remus sensed fear in Padfoot. He let go of Padfoot’s neck and bore him down to the mattress under his weight. Something was not right. He felt anxious, and Padfoot’s attitude did not help. NotQuiteProngs came over and pulled on Remus’s shoulders, and that was decidedly wrong. Prongs didn’t have paws. He reared and cuffed the impostor. He had to subdue Padfoot.

NotQuiteProngs lost something off his face, then barked again. Again, Remus could understand Padfoot’s words, though not their meaning. ‘I tried a spell for my research project on experimental sex magic.’

There was one word Remus understood: sex. It unlocked a primal need in him and he rolled over Padfoot again, clawing at the fabric that covered him, masked his scent. He discovered that his paws had extra pads, ones that could grasp, and he closed his fists on the fabric and pulled. The pyjamas tore away in shreds. Remus howled triumphantly and humped at his mate.

NotQuiteProngs pulled him off again, and he was joined by another who was NotQuiteWormtail. Enraged and uncertain why this false pack prevented him from his goal, he loped around the room, back to his own things. The false pack-members tried to head him off and he doubled back quickly. He slammed into his mate and threw his head back to snarl at the others. Something impeded his erection. He looked down and saw that he was wearing the same striped cloth that Padfoot had had on. He tore the front flap away and launched himself at Padfoot again.

‘Remus, you’re reacting to a spell!’ Padfoot barked at him. ‘Moony! Stop! Calm down!’

_Moony_. That was his name, he remembered. Padfoot wanted him to calm. There were only two things he could think of that would calm him. He needed to mate. And....

...He needed to mark his territory. He needed to make things right, by making them smell right. Padfoot was on all fours on the ground, reaching his paw under the bed for something. Moony mounted him in seconds. He prodded him briskly a few times, rearing onto his hind legs as he pumped inside Padfoot’s smooth hole, and came quickly, hot and hard. His semen dripped out of Padfoot, but it still didn’t smell right, the smell of Padfoot beneath him. It was tinged with blood, but that didn’t satisfy either. He pulled out of the santorum and felt a different pressure in his prick already forming. He lifted his leg and urinated over Padfoot’s backside and legs. The stream was hot and smelled of ammonia and the tang of salt. 

Padfoot whimpered as the acidic token of ownership trickled into his wounds, and Moony whined in relief. Message sent; message received. He tightened the muscle and trotted to the corner of the bed, letting loose more of his flow. Next he approached the false pack. If they insisted on making themselves part of this, they would respond to his dominance, too.

He fixed his eye on NotQuiteProngs, and attacked.

 

TBC....


	26. In which a bad situation requires intervention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not all Magic is Practical….

James stared into Remus’s eyes just before the other boy pounced, cock still dripping from first fucking Sirius and then peeing on him. 

‘Peter, get help,’ he ordered in a low voice, then dove for his bed. Remus jumped forward to head him off, which allowed Peter to dart through the door. James dodged about the room, using his Quidditch reflexes to evade his attacker. ‘Sirius? Are you all right?’

Sirius raised his head from the floor and groaned. ‘My legs are sticky,’ he said groggily. ‘Where’s my wand?’

‘Under the bed,’ James hollered at him as he leapt from one bed to another. The snarling, snapping Remus was still chasing him. ‘Did you happen to look up how to _reverse_ this spell?’

Sirius swept his hand under the bed and came out clutching his wand. ‘It said that sexual stimulation should be enough - the sex act would release the spell.’

‘Well, I don’t think it worked,’ James yelled back. Remus had remembered or figured out how to use his thumbs: he caught James by the ankle and sent him crashing to the floor. His chin bumped the ground before Remus dragged him back onto the bed and began literally ripping his clothes off.

‘ _Finite Incantatem!_ ’ Sirius shrieked. It had no effect. He stumbled forward to pull Remus off James. Remus rubbed his hair against Sirius’s chest, but then pushed him away harshly and grabbed for James again.

‘Moony! Moony, it’s okay. It’s okay.’ Sirius rushed over to put himself between James and his rabid boyfriend. ‘Here. Take me again, come on.’

Remus stopped to sniff deeply of Sirius’s crotch. It smelled powerfully right. He wasn’t interested in the rightness; he wanted to right what was currently wrong. He butted his head against Sirius’s stomach, pushing him out of the way and tackling James.

‘That didn’t work, Sirius!’ James yelled. ‘Any more bright ideas?’

Sirius watched as Remus, still in a feral state, began to lick James from his head to his crotch. James’s eyes were wide and without his glasses, which Remus had knocked off minutes before, there was nothing to hide the growing fear in them.

‘I think maybe his sex with me wasn’t enough. We have to satiate him.’

‘Great. So we should just let him – ow! – rape us alternately? – Hey!’ James slapped Remus’s head away from his prick. ‘Don’t bite! Don’t bite!’

Remus didn’t bite. He pinned James’s arms and licked his balls and the cleft between his legs. He sucked James’s testicles one by one. James’s protests turned to gibbering groans and encouraging shouts.

Remus licked up to the head of James’s prick and took the shaft into his mouth, sucking hungrily, just as Peter and Lily ran into the room.

‘He’s locked in his wolf-mind, Lil,’ Sirius explained hurriedly. ‘I think he can understand me, but he doesn’t seem to listen to anyone else. Doesn’t do much good, though – it’s like he’ll only catch every other word. I think if he’s sexually satisfied, the spell will end. But so far, nothing’s enough.’

‘He needs more stimulation,’ Lily guessed. ‘This is going to take all of us. Sirius, you’re hurt!’

‘Just a little. I’m sticky,’ he grumbled. ‘I need to clean up. Have you got a plan?’

‘Well, for one thing – Peter, distract him before he castrates James, will you?’

Peter looked at her like she had just asked him to put his head in a hippogriff’s beak, but he sprinted over and stroked Remus’s body until he could get him to turn to one side. When Remus rolled away, Peter slid half underneath him and began to give him one of his spectacular blow jobs. Remus’s furtive seduction of James slowed.

‘It’s working,’ Lily told Sirius. ‘Go wash quickly, and come back. If he really does understand you, I’m going to need you here.’

‘I’ll be quick as I can. Hang in there, mates!’ he called to Peter and James, and hobbled out to the bathroom.

Lily dropped her bathrobe and shed her pyjamas before walking over to the scene. Remus still had James’s dick in his mouth, but he was moving much more slowly, clearly enjoying the way Peter tugged on him below. Lily held out her wrist, palm down, and forced it under Remus’s nose. 

‘Come on, you know me, Remus,’ she coaxed. He lifted up his head, dropping James’s cock like an old sausage, and rubbed his face against the back of her hand. ‘That’s it…mark me. Make us all pack. You know us.’ Lily sat on the edge of the bed, insinuating herself between Remus and James. James dragged himself backward to support her, ready to push himself between if need be.

Remus whined high in his throat and pushed Lily down. He licked her pubic hair and labia, laving them as he had done James. Lily screamed in surprise. Peter came up for air, and Remus growled.

‘Peter don’t stop!’ James snapped. ‘You’re the only thing keeping him calm.’

‘I can’t breathe,’ Peter panted. ‘Just taking a break.’

‘We can’t take a break!’ James panicked. He launched himself forward, but then Remus did something unexpected.

Remus looked up from Lily’s bush. He picked up James bodily from the bed where he was trying to crawl toward Remus, and dumped him at Lily’s head, his cock practically in her face. Remus scuttled back down Lily’s torso, hands still on James’s hips. He pushed his fingertips against James’s arse a few times before returning to his study of Lily’s vagina. Then he pulled Peter’s hand toward his own crotch.

‘I think he wants you two to….’ Peter said, looking up at them from the foot of the bed.

‘Yeah, and you,’ James said. ‘Gods…who would have thought….’

‘Oh! _Oh!_ ’ Lily shouted under her assault. ‘Oh my god, it’s so _good_! James, come here! Need you…’ Lily babbled, reaching for his cock.

Peter turned so he could lie more comfortably with his head toward the foot and suck Remus down. Remus applied his tongue to Lily’s cunt, rather skilfully for his lack of inhibition in this form, and Lily, lying on her back with James straddling her shoulders, had him prop her on pillows so she could reach his cock. 

Sirius rushed back in. ‘Okay, I’m here. What do you ne—’ He stopped dead when he saw the scene. ‘Oh my….’

Remus looked up at the sound of Sirius’s voice. He barked commandingly and beat his hands on the bed between Peter’s legs and Lily’s head.

‘Sirius, come on,’ James said urgently. ‘He positioned us, so maybe he knows what will break the spell. I think you need to complete the circle.’ He looked down at Lily. ‘Baby, do you think you can do this sideways?’

Lily nodded, growing beyond comprehension from the ministrations of Remus’s tongue. Sirius approached hesitantly, marvelling at the many-limbed chain. ‘Okay…so if I lie facing Pete….’

‘I can turn this way,’ James thought aloud. He changed position to stand on his knees and hands over Lily. ‘And I can lean forward….’ He lowered himself to his elbows, arse high in the air to allow Lily room to breathe, and craned his head over Sirius’s hips to bring his mouth level with Sirius’s prick.

‘That okay?’ Sirius asked.

‘Can you turn toward me a little?’ James asked, rolling his eyes at the surrealism of it all. Sirius twisted his hips and James found purchase.

The room grew quiet. Only faint moans and heavy breath hung in the air, uttered around the slurping, _schlooping_ sound of suction occasionally unsealed. Five bodies interlocked at genitals and mouths, all concurrently eating and being eaten. The air crackled with magical energy such as none of them had ever experienced during sex. Sirius’s spell settled around them at its full power. They writhed and thrashed and pressed into one another until Peter hit orgasm. That sent Sirius into ejaculation, which set off James. James came into Lily’s mouth, who bucked her hips and moaned around him, and Remus’s tongue found her G-spot as she clutched her thighs around his head. Her muscles contracted and then released, sluicing buckets of hot, clear, bitter orgasmic fluid. As her juices gushed into Remus’s mouth and spilled out onto his face, he finally crashed through the waves of his own climax, and he yelled loud and long while he spurted into Peter’s waiting throat.

They collapsed in their loose circular heap, every one spent beyond measure at the chain reaction and the heady feeling of magic in their copulation, now dissipating like a storm cloud turned white again by a gale of wind. Their skin tingled with released energy, their mouths were dry and sticky from each other’s effusions. 

Remus lifted his head off Lily’s thigh. ‘What just happened?’ he asked. His question was a mix of wrath, confusion, and disbelief. ‘Sirius…did you…did I…?’

‘Puppy, for once, please, just…don’t ask.’ Sirius sighed. ‘And remind me to cancel that date with Tanya Bennet.’

‘Isn’t she the one who wanted….’

‘Yeah. I didn’t mind all this bit,’ Sirius said, patting James with one hand and Peter with the other. ‘But I don’t _ever_ want another exposure to a Golden Shower.’

 

TBC….


	27. In which Sirius gives Remus an Easter basket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hair of the Dog

Remus told Sirius that he understood the temptation, but that he hoped Sirius had learned his lesson about experimental magic. Sirius, for his part, felt so bad about what had happened that he went into Hogsmeade the next weekend and came back with a basket of items from Bleuddwydd’s Bath Supplies.

‘What’s all this for?’ Remus asked him when he came up and found the basket on his bed.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sirius said. ‘And an early Easter basket.’

‘Where are the sweets, then?’

‘Er….’ Sirius pointed to the wrapping. ‘The bath bombes are edible. So is the moisturizing lotion.’

‘Ah.’ 

‘I thought…I wanted some way to make it up to you, what happened.’

‘Well, Sirius, I pissed on you. I think that about makes us even.’

‘Nah, saved me from Tanya’s clutches, that did. I thought…’ and he whispered in Remus’s ear.

Remus shivered. ‘Oh. Okay, then.’

 

They snuck out under James’s invisibility cloak armed with towels, the basket, and their shaving kits, and headed for the Prefects’ Bath. Remus said the password and they ducked inside. He checked that the mermaid was asleep. 

‘I don’t know how to keep the ghosts or Peeves from coming in,’ he told Sirius, who was gawking at the giant pool with the taps. ‘Sirius, close your mouth before something flies in. You’ve been here before.’

‘I know, but that was before we could use it legally.’

‘You still can’t,’ Remus reminded him. He turned on several taps and the water plunged in to begin filling the tub. ‘Let’s see here,’ he said, coming back to the basket of luxuries.

‘There’s a foaming loofah in there,’ Sirius commented, pulling out his shaving kit. ‘And I thought you’d like the little massaging barsoap.’

‘Mm.’ Remus selected a few items and laid them out at the tub edge. He took out his own kit and arranged it where he could get to it, then walked over to the benches and disrobed. The water was about halfway up the tub, so he added another couple taps’ contents. Multi-coloured bubbles rose into the air as the pool filled with steaming water.

‘Where did you get this idea, exactly?’ Remus asked while they sat at the edge, waiting.

‘One of the letters. Um…Veronica Seton, I think? She mentioned that she…you know.’ He pointed at his crotch. ‘In a heart shape. And I thought being your barber might be fun.’

Remus nodded. The water lapped at their toes, then covered their feet. ‘Okay,’ Remus said. He slipped in to the warm stream and swam across to turn off the taps. ‘Come in, it’s great!’

Sirius shucked his robe and dove toward the middle of the pool. He swam underneath to where Remus trod water, and tugged him under by his legs. They cavorted for a time, until they grew winded, and then Remus swam back to the ledge near their things, Sirius following close behind.

‘Sit,’ Sirius called to him, and he complied. Sirius stood on the ledge and reached into the basket for the shampoo. He popped open the lid and poured a generous portion into his hands, then stood over Remus. He began to lather. He massaged Remus’s scalp and short hair, soon discovering that he had used far too much shampoo for the other boy’s shaggy cut. He slicked Remus’s hair back to shake off some of the excess, dunked his hands in the warm water to start over with the remaining suds. Remus closed his eyes and tilted his head back, trusting Sirius to his ministrations. 

Sirius ran his fingers through Remus’s wet, sudsy hair, pressed his fingertips in small circles on Remus’s scalp. He scraped off the largest handfuls of bubbles and scooped up a handful of the fragrant bathwater. He brought his cupped hands over Remus’s head and slowly trickled the water onto his hair, smoothing it back as he rinsed. Over and over he cascaded water onto Remus’s head, running his fingers through and then smoothing it down.

‘With your hair wet, it’s almost as long as mine,’ he commented, petting the hair as far as it would go between Remus’s shoulders.

‘Mm. Due for a cut, then,’ Remus murmured. He sounded half-asleep. 

Sirius cupped Remus’s head at the base in both hands. ‘Let your legs out from the ledge,’ he coaxed. ‘Float. I’ll hold you.’

Remus allowed his body to relax in the water. His legs drifted toward the centre and Sirius guided his upper body back and back until his head went in the water almost to his face. Sirius shifted to hold him in one hand. He dipped his other hand in and gently poured water over his crown, his forehead, each cheek. Then he came back to the ledge and eased Remus’s head onto his shoulder. He fumbled behind himself for the shaving cream, then found it, popped the cap off, and shook it vigorously. He held it over Remus’s chin and sprayed. Foam soon covered Remus’s jaw and cheeks, his upper lip, his neck. Sirius put the can down and grabbed Remus’s razor. Slowly and carefully, he scraped Remus’s skin smooth.

He concentrated fully on his task, as attentive to each stroke as if it were his own face, as if he were being graded on his performance. At last, he wiped off the excess shaving cream and rinsed Remus’s face off with the scented water, then dabbed his cheeks with lotion.

Remus’s eyes fluttered open. ‘All done?’ he asked as if waking from a nap. He stretched his arms out of the water.

‘Done there, yes,’ Sirius said. ‘Not done washing you,’ he continued with a lascivious eyebrow wiggle. He picked up the loofah and kicked off from the ledge, then swam back around, pushing Remus into the recessed seat. He took a deep breath and ducked under the water.

He put his left arm around Remus’s waist to hold him in place, using his right hand for the loofah. The magical sponge produced fresh suds underwater. He scrubbed Remus from his chest to his toes, coming up for air occasionally, saving the best for last. He cleaned Remus with the soapy, soft sponge, stroking his shaft and petting it between his hands. He broke the surface again and shook the water from his eyes and hair. Remus lay with his head back on the edge of the pool, eyes closed, quite content from the look of him.

‘How do you feel?’ Sirius asked when he had caught his breath.

In answer, Remus simply opened his arms and smiled. Sirius swam up to him and laid his head against Remus’s shoulder. Remus hugged him tight. 

‘Good. Do me?’ Sirius requested. He scratched his stubble.

Remus opened his eyes and shifted his hips. In the warm water, he slipped into Sirius with relative ease. Sirius leaned back against him, pushing himself onto Remus’s shaft willingly. They made love without haste. Afterward, Sirius kissed Remus and said, ‘That was brilliant, puppy. But I meant, Will you give me a shave?’

He received a splash in his face, followed by an armful of werewolf bearing him under the surface. They chased and splashed and wrestled each other in the pool for a while. Remus turned on more taps to reheat the water a bit, and when it had refilled with hot water, he told Sirius to go sit on the ledge. Remus shaved Sirius’s face and neck, and then spread out one of the towels at the water’s edge. ‘Sit up on the towel,’ he told his lover.

Sirius vaulted out of the water and landed on the towel with his feet dangling over the edge. He reached across for the other towel and wiped his chest and arms, then scrubbed at his hair with the cloth. Remus, meanwhile, picked up the shaving cream and shook it, then sprayed a generous quantity between Sirius’s legs and all around his stomach.

‘What the--’ Sirius said quizzically, looking down.

‘You said you got the idea because Veronica shaves her privates, right?’ Remus challenged, looking up at him.

‘Yes, but I just thought since we have other parts to shave....’

‘Trust me.’ Remus said simply.

Remus took up the razor and painstakingly shaved the hair above Sirius’s cock. He shifted his balls to one side, and shaved around that, then the other side. Then, ‘Spread a little more?’ he asked, and Sirius complied limply, and ‘Lean back a bit.’ Sirius did. Remus carefully plied the razor under Sirius’s balls, between his legs and down the seam of flesh toward his anus. He rinsed away the remaining foam, took stock, and reapplied cream to catch the spots he had missed. Sirius watched him work, holding his legs apart so that he could sit up and still see.

‘Wow,’ he commented. ‘That’s a weird feeling. Looks strange, too,’ he observed, taking in his now hairless gut and groin.

‘I think it looks good,’ Remus said, and he pushed Sirius down onto his back. He climbed onto the ledge to kiss Sirius at the base of his cock. He lifted one hip to urge Sirius to roll over. Sirius’s arse was damp, but clean from their bath, if still a little sore from their earlier coupling. Remus pulled the cheeks apart with his thumbs, and buried his face in the cleft. He blew hot air into Sirius’s arsehole, then licked the ring of muscle. He continued to lave the skin on either side of his anus, occasionally pushing his tongue into the perineum, pulling back out to lick around the edge, back in, a bit further. Bit by bit, he drove his tongue further into Sirius’s arse, until at last, minutes later, he was truly tongue-fucking the other. Sirius moaned with pleasure, pushing his arse back against Remus’s tongue wantonly.

‘Gods, oh, gods! Remus...Remus I can’t hold out....’ He broke away from Remus’s mouth and plunged into the water, coming up behind his partner. He rammed his cock against Remus’s arse. Remus braced himself on the wall and brought one hand ’round to spread himself apart. Sirius probed, then thrust, throwing his arms around Remus so that he could stay in place. Remus clung to the edge of the tub, wrapped his legs around Sirius behind him and pulled forward to aid Sirius in his effort.

Sirius slipped back and forth inside Remus until climax overtook him. They broke apart and Sirius kicked twice to reach the ledge. They knelt there, arms and heads resting on the cool tile, the water cooling slowly around them.

‘I think this might have been a mistake,’ Remus said.

‘Mistake? Gods, no - it was excellent,’ Sirius protested.

‘No, not that!’ Remus laughed. ‘I mean...shaving you. It’s going to really itch growing out. I’m sorry.’

Sirius shrugged. ‘Hey, whatever turns you on, love,’ he allowed. ‘Besides, it was really...different.’

‘You mean arousing?’ Remus asked.

‘Fuck, yes. That too.’ He stared into Remus’s eyes. ‘You know I’d do anything for you, right?’

‘I know, puppy.’

‘Good. ’Cause Merlin knows, it’s hard to keep up with you.’

Remus splashed him again and leapt from the tub and out of range with supernatural swiftness, leaving Sirius to wipe the water out of his eyes.

TBC....


	28. In which Remus is too much of a gentleman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezekiel 37:1-14

Under normal circumstances, Sirius would complain loud and long about any injury, milking it for all the attention it was worth. It was, Remus admitted, one of his less endearing qualities. As his nether-hair began to grow out again, however, he said not one word about his discomfort, though Remus did catch him scratching himself under their desks in class more than once. Remus attributed Sirius’s uncharacteristic stoicism to the personal nature of his problem, but there was probably a more immediate reason: Spring had made an entrance to Hogwarts, and with it, all Sirius’s thoughts turned to the Quidditch Cup.

He and James were training nearly every night of the week, and for hours every Saturday. It was just as well, Remus thought, that he had arranged to spend some time with Gideon, Kingsley, and now Katherine over the next few weeks, because Sirius certainly had no time or interest. He came home from practise and hit his books straight away. By the time he came stumbling into bed, he was too bleary for much of anything more than a perfunctory fuck once in a while.

Peter, after the experience in the daisy chain, had decided to get a bit more serious about finding out peoples’ kinks. He had sent away for a second camera, one with a lot more features than his brother’s, and once it arrived, he put it to use taking candid shots of people. He would hang it round his neck and put on James’s invisibility cloak, then turn into a rat to sneak around the castle looking for couples _in flagrante_. Their noise usually covered his clicking shutter more than adequately. Already he had a rather impressive collection. They decided to use the safely anonymous ones for the calendar.

There was one thing that bothered Peter, though he had not yet decided whether or not to tell the others. He had overheard a few girls talking in the bathroom on one of his forays, and someone mentioned _Magical Matchmakers_. Most everyone in the group had sent them a letter, but they were complaining that they had never heard anything back. One girl did speak up to say that based on her letter, she had been matched up with Michael Furze, but that it hadn’t worked out.

Then one of them announced that she had seen at once it was a hoax and hadn’t bothered to waste her money on an obvious scam. When they asked her why she thought so, she listed a dozen reasons, all of them salient, why she suspected Hogwarts students.

‘It truly sounds like the kind of thing boys would do to get girls, doesn’t it?’ one of the other girls commented. ‘Write us with your fantasy. Weren’t you worried you were writing to someone who…well, who was just going to get off on it?’

‘Well, if it finds me an eligible partner for the Leaving Ball, I don’t care. The boys in this place are _impossible_ when it comes to asking a girl out.’

‘Still. I’d be looking out, if I were you. I don’t trust _Magical Matchmakers_. Did they ever put out ads anywhere but here? And a Hogsmeade Owl Box….’

‘They ran in the Daily Prophet.’

‘Once.’

‘Maybe they didn’t get enough business,’ someone suggested.

‘If you ask me, it had the distinct feeling of those Gryffindor terrors about it,’ said the girl who’d been holding forth.

Peter had had to leave then, because one of the girls dropped her comb and would have seen him hiding under the counter. But the young woman who had pronounced their matchmaking service a hoax was much too close to the truth for his comfort. Still, he supposed, they had made a good faith effort to match people, when they could, and they hadn’t done anything illegal. A bit unethical, perhaps. But not illegal.

As their Easter holidays approached, and with it the final push of N.E.W.T. revision, Peter decided not to worry about it and concentrated on passing his exams.

 

Remus met Katherine at the library on the night they had agreed for their date. He hadn’t much of anything planned, since his predilection was simply to spend time looking at Dark Arts books. Katherine was apparently fascinated by dark creatures. He supposed it might be imprudent, to date her when she could name him werewolf without too much trouble, but he reasoned that perhaps she would not care, given her preoccupation with much nastier specimens.

‘I found a really good resource on yetis, the other day,’ Remus told her quietly after they had passed Madam Pince. ‘It’s over—’

‘Remus,’ Katherine interrupted. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I didn’t ask you to ask me out just so we could be lookin’ at pictures in books, now.’

‘Oh. I see. Well, er, what did you have in mind?’

‘I thought we’d break into Professor Raines’s office,’ she announced matter-of-factly.

‘Professor Raines’s office?’

‘Well, the classroom, at any rate. All them lovely skeletons and all them cages. Don’t you think that would be a lot more fun than reading about it?’

‘Katherine, I don’t really think dark creatures are supposed to be fun,’ Remus said. Of all the classrooms they shouldn’t be in at night, the only one worse than Defence Against the Dark Arts was Professor Dee’s Potions dungeon.

‘Sure, and are you one of the great Marauders of Gryffindor, or not?’ Katherine asked haughtily. ‘And here I thought you’d be more than up to the task. But, if you’re afraid….’

‘I didn’t say I was afraid,’ Remus protested, ‘just that I think your proposal calls for caution. Professor Raines might be in his office.’

‘Oh, no, he’s never there on Thursday nights.’

Suddenly the timing of their outing became clear to him. ‘You just want someone you think is reckless enough to help you. Why?’

‘I wouldn’t put it that way,’ Katherine said lightly. ‘’Tis more like…I believe you have the right adventurous spirit. Would I be wrong in thinking you’re not above a bit o’rule breaking, now and again?’

‘Katherine, I’m a prefect!’ Remus made his voice appropriately aghast.

‘Right. Which only means ye can keep t’other prefects away, while we’re figuring out how to get in.’

There was no getting around her. Besides, he had to admit, he knew that Raines had a particular volume on the properties of natural wards, which would be most helpful for Remus’s Theory topic, and which he had flatly refused to loan Remus. It was in the locked case behind Raines’s desk in his classroom. He sighed. ‘Okay. But I’ll need to get something from the dormitory. Meet me at the entrance to the DA corridor in twenty minutes.’

 

Twenty minutes later, Remus arrived at the corridor with the Marauders’ Map in his pocket. He pulled it out, activated it, and looked it over. ‘Okay,’ he said as he came round the corner to where Katherine waited. ‘The coast is clear.’

‘I wager “Alohomora” will set off an alarm,’ Katherine said, eyeing the door suspiciously.

‘Count on it.’ Remus reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of wires.

‘What’re those?’ Katherine asked.

‘Muggle tools. Lockpicks.’

‘Ooh! A Muggle thing? Let me see!’ Katherine pulled one of the bent wires out of Remus’s hand and pored over it. ‘They’re so clever, aren’t they, for all they don’t have magic.’ She handed it back. ‘So what does it do?’

‘It doesn’t _do_ anyth…well, the bent part lifts the hammer of the lock,’ Remus explained, ‘when you hold it right. If it’ll work.’

‘Muggles are fascinating. I’m taking Muggle Studies. They never tell you much of anything interesting. Me cousin is married to a Muggle. I think I’d like that – I could turn him into a toad if he gave me trouble.’

Remus grimaced, but said nothing. It wouldn’t be his problem. He was beginning to regret this choice. Her ‘date’ had seemed intellectually stimulating and very informative; now it was turning into something not so appealing. But he was committed, at least for a while.

The latch clicked encouragingly, and Remus turned the knob experimentally. The door creaked and swung inward. He waited.

‘We’re in?’ Katherine asked and began to walk forward.

‘Wait!’ Remus hissed at her. He pulled her down swiftly, using more strength than he needed. A whole flock of paper birds flew out of the room and flattened themselves on the opposite wall. Remus stood up and went to look at the pages. They were all marked ‘Detention!’ in large block letters.

‘I’ve heard of those,’ Katherine breathed reverently. ‘They attach themselves to the culprit and off they don’t come until you’ve done whatever’s inscribed on them. Raines is a sadist.’

‘Yup,’ Remus agreed. He lit the tip of his wand and waved it inside the door a few times. Nothing happened. ‘I think we can go in now. But be careful.’ 

The creepiness of the room by day was only enhanced in the gloom of night. High windows illuminated the desks with long, narrow streaks of starlight. The locked bookcases around the edges of the room disappeared into shadows. Cages, draped in cloth, rattled ominously. Skeletons of creatures large and legendary hung or stood on frames all around the room.

‘Remus, what’s the strangest place you’ve ever done it, then?’ Katherine asked him.

‘Hm? Oh…well, broomback, I guess,’ Remus told her. ‘Unless you count over the Floo. Or…er,’ he stopped.

‘Or?’

‘Filch’s torture chamber.’ He blushed.

‘Really?’ Katherine sounded impressed. 

‘Long story,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Not...with Filch, of course.’

‘I should hope not. Though, ’twould be a sight.’ She sat on one of the desks, swinging her legs slightly. ‘I were in a graveyard with Patrick Finnegan last summer,’ she related dreamily. ‘’Twas a lovely evenin’. We went walkin’ and I dared him to walk through the graveyard, and he chased me. We laid down in the fresh-mown grass. I could see some spirits roaming about, but Paddy, he’s a Muggle, so he couldn’t. I swear I heard a banshee that night, too.’

‘Weren’t you worried about her?’ Remus asked.

‘Oh, no. If you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone, really. They’re very sad creatures, really, banshees.’ She poked at one of the skeletons on a frame near the front of the classroom. ‘Remus?’

‘Hm?’

‘Is it true you’re only attracted to other boys?’

‘Where did you hear that?’ Remus gasped, spinning round to face her hastily.

‘Oh, here and there. I heard about that incident in the prefects’ bath, with Janice Turpin and Viola Pruning. I didn’t believe it, though. I thought y’only liked boys.’

‘Right,’ Remus said through clenched teeth. ‘Well, first off, that story about the bathroom is an exaggeration. I just forgot what day it was and they walked in on me. And secondly…well, it doesn’t matter. I should have told you earlier….’ He explained about his bargain with Sirius. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m cheating, but I also don’t want you to hope I might leave him.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Katherine nodded. ‘Well, that’s all right. Paddy asked me to marry him before I came back to school, but I told him I wanted to get me education first. So I guess I’m sort of in the same boat, d’ye see?’

Remus smiled. ‘Yes, I think I do.’

‘Good. In that case, we may as well do what we came here to do.’

‘And what did you come here to do, Miss O’Malley?’ Remus asked playfully. He moved in toward her perch on the desk.

‘Sure, I came here to shag a werewolf, Mr Lupin,’ she answered prettily. 

Remus froze. Even the lop-sided grin he wore in imitation of Sirius’s “seductive” look checked itself. He stopped breathing for a moment.

Katherine laughed. ‘I’ve been studying dark creatures since I were nine, Remus. You don’t think I wouldn’t have guessed it long before now? I want this. Right here. Right now.’ She pulled her skirt up around her knees. ‘Come on and take me.’

Remus shuddered. He’d never been with anyone who wanted him _because_ he was a werewolf, and it was a strange, if unexpected, turn-on. Katherine was completely insane, he decided straight away, but the prospect apparently appealed to parts of his body, even if his mind told him he should probably be insulted. 

‘How many other…what I mean to say is, do you make a habit of propositioning vampires and so on?’

Katherine laughed again. ‘Of course not, oh, lord love you, Remus. Where’m I going to meet any at home? Besides, as denizens of the dark go, you’ve got to admit, yer far from really all that dangerous.’

Remus had to agree. He closed the distance between them and ran his hands up her thighs, under her skirt and robes. She pulled him between her legs like an expert, wrapping her calves behind him and running her hands through his hair when she kissed him. They snogged a while and Remus let his hands roam freely around her body – her breasts, her legs, tentatively around her bush. Immediately he realised she was wearing crotchless knickers. 

‘Oh! Yes, that’s the way, love,’ Katherine encouraged him. She leaned back and shifted her hips almost to the edge of the desk. Remus slipped his fingers between her labia and rubbed her clit the way he’d learned to do with Lily. Katherine thrashed against him with enthusiasm. He probed deeper, fingers sliding into her hot flesh. She collapsed against his shoulder. ‘More,’ she murmured softly into the skin of his neck.

Remus wanted to comply, really, but he could tell, even without opening his trousers, that his initial arousal at the thought was fading. He supposed he could drop to his knees and use his tongue, but the only time he’d ever done that to anyone was under Sirius’s spell, and despite where he was willing to apply his tongue on Sirius, he was still strangely squeamish about eating out a girl. He hesitated, trying to think how to satisfy her.

‘Are ye’all right?’ Katherine asked him when his hands slowed.

Remus jumped. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, and scissored his fingers inside her.

‘Mm,’ she said. Remus couldn’t tell if that meant something good or bad, but a moment later she pushed his hand away. ‘Let’s get you ready,’ she continued, and with a wicked smile up at him, she began to pull his robes aside and undo his trousers.

‘I—’ Remus protested, covering his fly automatically.

‘What’s wrong?’ Katherine asked, a mixture of worry and exasperation. ‘I thought you said you liked girls too.’

‘I do!’

‘Just not me, is it?’ she accused sharply.

‘No—I don’t know,’ Remus answered in confusion. ‘Maybe I’m just distracted. This room, the thought that Raines might find us any minute….’

‘All right,’ Katherine shrugged. ‘Maybe I put too much pressure on you, eh?’ She hiked her skirt up even more, so he could see the red lace peeking out where it framed her vagina. ‘I’ve got an idea. You’re strong, right?’ Remus nodded in the half-light. He had no idea what she was leading up to. ‘I’ve been thinking about that skeleton, over there,’ she pointed to the corner. ‘The manticore.’

‘What about it?’ Remus asked suspiciously. He wasn’t about to leave evidence they’d been here.

‘Think it’s real?’

‘Um….’ Remus walked over to the large collection of bones. ‘I think so. Looks like a preservation spell or something. Pretty neat, actually.’

‘Oh, excellent! Give us a leg bone, then.’

‘What?’

‘Come on… they’re not pinned or anything Muggle like that. Take a look.’

She was right. They were unconnected save by a spell holding the whole framework in place.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ he asked, a sinking feeling in his stomach.

‘You’ll see.’ She swung her legs and bunched up her skirt around her waist. ‘Come on. Haven’t got all night.’

Remus rolled his eyes. Totally deranged, he decided. He wished Patrick Finnegan good luck; he’d need it. He studied the skeleton, found a likely tibia bone, and eased it away from the rest. The bones remained in place, but the one in his hand pulsed oddly, as if it wanted to rejoin its fellows.

‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ he warned, bringing the bone back over to her.

‘’Tis fine, Remus, don’t be such a wee baby,’ Katherine scoffed. She held out her hand for the bone. Remus gave it over. She squealed with delight, like a child who has been given a much-coveted doll. ‘So smooth,’ she marvelled. ‘And that pulse is…heaven. Oh!’ She shuddered and lowered the knob of the knee end to her groin.

‘Katherine, are you going to do what I think—’ Remus began, but he never finished his question. Katherine touched the bone to her clit and her eyes rolled back in her head. 

‘Mmm,’ she grunted, and she beckoned him closer. ‘Hold it here,’ she said, placing Remus’s hand on the haft. ‘That’s it….’ She guided the near end while Remus dazedly held on. He exerted no force of his own, but he didn’t let go, either. Katherine worked the knobby end of the bone into herself, slamming the bulbous portion against her G-spot again and again, letting the long shaft hit her clit occasionally. ‘Oh, so amazing!’ she kept saying, and ‘’Tis a fair wonder!’ and less comprehensible things.

Remus felt his grip tightening as she pounded herself more fervently. The bone virtually throbbed as if alive, and its vibration seemed to jolt all the way up his arm. He watched her with growing fascination. Finally, after what seemed far too long to him, she subsided, slowing her movement.

‘Oh, my, I could keep going all night!’ she panted. ‘I need to stop. Felt so good….’ She pulled the bone out in slow motion, as if unwilling to let it leave her. It was wet and vaguely pink-tinged.

‘I think you bled on it,’ Remus commented in horror.

‘Mm-hmm,’ Katherine agreed. ‘Worth it,’ she decided.

‘If you say so.’ He cleaned up the bone and brought it back to the skeleton. It snapped back into place. The whole structure glowed blue for a moment, then settled back to its normal, ghostly white. Remus thought they were going to be all right, but just then the skeleton opened its jaw and roared: ‘THIEF!’

Remus gulped. ‘We’d better go,’ he said, backing away to the desk. ‘Are you ready? I’m sure that was meant for Raines to hear.’

‘Aye, ’twas, I’m certain, but to be honest, I don’t know as I can move just yet,’ Katherine said. ‘You’d better go.’

‘No, I shan’t leave you in distress, my lady,’ Remus said, not sure why he felt so gallant. Perhaps it was lingering guilt over his earlier failure to respond. He rearranged her skirts properly, and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. ‘Where to? And don’t say a graveyard.’

TBC….


	29. In which Remus gets pushed too far

Thanks to the Marauder’s Map, Remus got Katherine back to her common room entrance and made his way back to the dormitory without incident. Raines was apparently livid at being summoned to his classroom in the middle of the night, but could not identify the interlopers. As a result, he was simply murderous toward all his classes equally, but this was hardly remarkable.

Slytherin had flattened Ravenclaw in their match, which meant that they would play Gryffindor for the Cup. The rivalry between the houses manifested in numerous pranks, with James and Sirius frequent targets. The only neutral zones seemed to be lessons (everyone was too busy preparing for N.E.W.T.s). Sirius had jokingly suggested that they should hire tasters at mealtimes, and to Remus’s chagrin, a few first-years had volunteered adoringly.

Of course, given the arrangement with Dumbledore, there was one Slytherin who conspicuously avoided any activity toward the two of them: Snape. That did not mean that he didn’t pick on the other Gryffindor players, nor, James suspected, that he didn’t have a hand in some of the more creative pranks he and Sirius fell prey to.

There was one spectacular night when both James and Sirius had unexpectedly turned green when they opened their ink bottles. They went for two days before they could change their skin colour, and then it went polka dot for a day before returning to normal. Then there was the time someone aimed a really amazing hex at James’s shoes, and he could barely hold still long enough to get them off. He had to use slippers for a week until his shoes lost their animation. But the worst was when someone transfigured Sirius’s shampoo into hair remover, and he came back to dress one morning, bald as a billiard cue. Even his eyebrows were gone.

‘It’s permanent!’ he railed, turning red with fury at his visage in the mirror. ‘I’m going to kill him!’

‘You’ve no proof,’ Remus said wearily as he dressed.

‘He doesn’t _need_ proof, Moony. Look at him!’ James snapped. ‘It’s obviously something Snape would do.’

‘I’m not so sure Snape knows what shampoo is, much less how to transfigure it,’ Peter reasoned.

Sirius would be neither placated nor consoled. He was certain Snape had conceived of, if not helped to execute the plan, and he determined to find out. Surprising everyone, most of all Remus, Sirius sought out his brother.

‘I’m going with you,’ Remus insisted. ‘Someone has to keep you from knocking his head in.’

‘What if I did? No loss,’ Sirius growled dangerously.

‘Sirius, think. You don’t want to risk either being barred from your last Quidditch match or something even worse. Even if he does have it coming to him.’

Remus fell into step beside Sirius and they went looking for Regulus. It did not go well. Sirius might have been calm enough to talk to Regulus, but every person they passed in the corridors laughed or pointed at his bald head. By the time they reached the entrance to the dungeons near the Slytherin common room, Sirius was seething again.

‘Lupin! What are you doing with that overgrown baby? Oh, wait...’ a jeering voice called. ‘Regulus! Didn’t you say Sirius was your _older_ brother? Come take a look at him now....’ A whole crowd of Slytherins rounded a corner, led by Nott, the younger Lestrange, Avery, Rosier, and bringing up the rear, Regulus and Snape. Regulus pushed through the others to smirk at his brother’s depilated head. 

‘Were you looking for me, _brother_?’ he asked snootily. 

Sirius, to Remus’s relief, straightened and said quite calmly. ‘Yes, I was. Could I have a word?’

‘I’ll give you two, Sirius,’ Regulus answered with an accompanying gesture.

Sirius smiled as if he expected the rudeness. ‘I’d like to talk to you alone, Reg. Will you talk to me?’

Regulus looked around at his companions. It seemed he was weighing his options, and that he decided not to talk to his brother would read as a sign of weakness. ‘All right,’ he accepted with a calculatedly bored expression. He opened his arm in an invitation to go further into the dungeons. ‘You all go on; I’ll catch you up.’

The two Blacks walked away, remarkably similar in gait and colouring even though Sirius lacked hair. The little band of Slytherins sized up Remus, evidently decided he was not worth the trouble, and continued up the path toward the entrance hall. Snape shot him a look of pure disgust as he walked by. 

Remus leaned against the wall while he waited for Sirius. He could see the two talking animatedly through the open door of the empty potions dungeon. He inched closer to monitor Sirius’s mood.

‘What’s the matter, Lupin? Afraid he’ll get hurt without you to protect him?’ Snape’s voice cut into him. 

‘No,’ Remus said, suppressing the urge to knock Snape’s head and be done with it. ‘Why did you come back – looking out for Regulus?’

Snape ignored the comment. ‘You know, I’ve never been able to work out why you came back after fifth year. It’s not like anyone would ever hire you. Then again, I’ve heard that werewolves make credible spies. Training, perhaps, for your career?’

Remus clenched his teeth. ‘I’m waiting for Sirius,’ he explained as if Snape had simply mistaken the reason.

‘Like a good little wolf cub?’ Snape shot back venomously. ‘Or…what is that curious name you call each other… _puppy_? You think he’ll ever think of you as less than his lap-dog? His wolfhound he can send on the errands he’s too scared to do himself?’

Remus snorted. ‘You’ve no idea, have you? Leave it, Snape. You don’t understand.’

‘I understand more than you think, Lupin,’ Snape said menacingly. ‘I know about Shacklebolt.’

Remus blinked. ‘So?’

‘Prewett, Shacklebolt, O’Malley, Montgomery, Weasley….I know what you’re doing.’

Remus’s eyes narrowed. ‘Just what do you think you know?’

‘That ridiculous dating service that cropped up in all the common rooms last term. It’s you. It’s got your stink all over it. Thought you’d bring in some cash, did you? And now you’re hiring yourself out all over the school.’ Snape never raised his voice, but his pace picked up and his rhythm increased in intensity. ‘How do you think the Headmaster would react to learning that after all the risks he’s taken for you, you’re abusing his hospitality? How do you think your precious _puppy_ ’ he spat the word, ‘would feel knowing you’re buggering little boys? What do you think your customers would do if they found out what you are!’ Snape worked himself up to a triumphant smirk. ‘I was wrong: you _are_ training for your next career, but it’s not as a spy, is it, Lupin? You’re just a filthy half-breed whore.’

Remus felt torn between laughing and cursing Snape into next week. It was not even what Snape had got right or not right; it was the mere fact that he was still so obsessed with the Marauders, with _him_. He smiled unkindly. 

‘Snape, do you know the difference between a whore, a slut, and a bitch? A whore will sleep with anyone who pays her. A slut will sleep with anyone. A bitch will sleep with anyone but _you_.’ 

Snape launched himself bodily at Remus, flailing with fists and completely ignoring his wand. Remus stepped aside swiftly. He dodged most of the assault and caught Snape’s arm as he passed. Twisting it, Remus pushed Snape up against the wall. He had just enough time to reflect that their position now was a mocking mirror-image of when Snape had thought him Felicity before Snape kicked up and connected between his legs.

Remus staggered backward, breathing hard.

‘You and your filth disgust me!’ Snape snarled. Remus realised that he was deliberately keeping quiet. This was just between them; he didn’t want company to help or observe. So be it. ‘As if I would sully myself with the likes of—’

Remus had had enough. He pushed himself forward again, and this time, his hand found purchase around Snape’s throat. He cut off the other’s insulting tirade with a squeeze, slammed the back of his head against the stones once to prove that he could.

‘I’m so sick and tired of your petty battles, Severus,’ he said slowly and clearly. Snape tried to kick again, but the attempt was feeble. All his concentration was on just trying to breathe. ‘Just. Leave. Us. Alone.’ Remus continued. ‘I don’t care what you think. I don’t need to justify myself to you or to anyone, but I’m going to say this once, and this had better be the end of it: There is nothing more to what you may have heard or seen than there appears. It’s none of your business. It’s nothing to do with you, and there’s nothing going on that’s any sort of danger to anyone, so _leave it_ and go slink back to whatever slimy hole you crawled out of.’

He eased up on Snape’s neck just enough to make sure the Slytherin wouldn’t attack him straight away. Snape gasped for breath and scrabbled at Remus’s hand, but he batted it away and pinned it to the wall above their heads. He was about to offer Snape a truce so they could break their preposterous pose, when Snape did something unexpected.

He brought his other hand up to Remus’s wrist around his throat. When Remus growled in warning, Snape squeezed it tighter.

‘I’m not going to murder you to put you out of your misery,’ Remus told him. But Snape shook his head, eyes over-bright. He twisted his arm in Remus’s hand, and Remus tightened his grip and slammed it to the wall again. Snape’s lip trembled. He tried to push his body off the wall, and Remus pushed back. His hand automatically tightened around Snape’s throat, and he moved a little closer for leverage.

And felt it. He’d felt that particular erection before, when he was the one up against the wall. 

Snape must have felt him brush past, too, for he made a desperate, strangled sound and pulled Remus up against him with his free hand. He pushed his windpipe into Remus’s hand, trying to recreate the choking sensation. His hips bucked wantonly against Remus’s pelvis.

Remus let go in horror. ‘You’re sick!’ he whispered, beyond the point of shouting. ‘You need help, you know that?’

Snape laughed, which came out as a wheezing, coughing mess. It was the only time Remus had ever heard him laugh, apart from within a group of jeering Slytherins. ‘Not as much help as you’re going to need. You tried to kill me,’ Snape threatened hoarsely.

‘Of course I didn’t,’ Remus said incredulously. ‘You’re the one who—’

‘Who what, Lupin? Strangled myself on you? Would anyone believe that? I think not.’ Snape leered malevolently. ‘Of course, if we continue where you left off, I see no need to tell the Headmaster.’

‘You psychotic bastard,’ Remus muttered. ‘You planned this whole provocation, didn’t you?’

Snape nodded. ‘Tell the truth, Lupin: that insipid Valentine’s trick: that was you, wasn’t it? You stole the boomslang skin from Professor Dee and made Polyjuice Potion. I can prove it, so don’t bother to deny it. Come with me right now, or I go straight to the Headmaster and tell him you violated the conditions of our arrangement.’

Remus drew in a ragged breath. He looked back up the corridor to the classroom where Regulus and Sirius had been talking.

‘Regulus is gone,’ Snape said triumphantly. ‘He hexed your precious Black five minutes ago, while you were busy defending your honour. Are you coming or not?’

Remus turned and ran to the classroom. Sure enough, Sirius lay on the floor, quite knocked out. Boils were raised all over his bare scalp. ‘Help me get him to the hospital wing,’ he said, looking down at his unconscious lover.

‘He’ll be fine,’ Snape said callously. ‘Besides, you don’t want anyone to see us in the corridors, and I believe neither of you thought to borrow Potter’s remarkable cloak. Did you?’

Remus seethed to see Snape so clearly enjoying himself. He had Remus cornered, and he knew it. ‘What the hell do you want, then?’ he asked.

‘I should think that’s obvious,’ Snape answered with infuriating civility. ‘Come along, werewolf.’

‘What happened to “I wouldn’t sully myself” and “Your filth disgusts me”?’ Remus asked, rooted to the spot.

Snape shrugged. ‘I’ll make an exception this time.’ He led the way out of the classroom and into Slytherin house, barely waiting for Remus to follow.

They passed through the side of a wall (‘The password will be changed tonight, so don’t even bother,’ Snape said as they came through) and into a room furnished much like Gryffindor’s, only without as many tapestries, and in green instead of red. High windows shed light in streams into the room. Snape walked straight through and up to a tower staircase, again just like Gryffindor’s, but a bit bigger. They walked up two full circular flights before they passed any doors leading off, then another three to get to the seventh-years’ dormitory. 

It was empty. Snape shut the door behind them and locked it hermetically. ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to a far bed by a window. Remus peered out the leaded glass; they were definitely above ground, but the view was of the other side of the lake, so it was not the same tower as Gryffindor’s rooms.

‘I still don’t understand. Why me?’ Remus asked with a shake of his head.

‘Because, Lupin, you’re the only one strong enough to do what I want, but not stupid enough to actually kill me in the process. It’s in your vested interest not to displease me,’ Snape gloated.

Remus rolled his eyes and turned from the window. Snape stood by the side of the bed. Remus walked forward and to his horror, his fingers twitched. There was an undeniable irony in throttling Snape, and knowing that Snape wanted to be handled roughly.

Snape reached down and lifted Remus’s hands, he placed one around his own neck, one around his waist. He tilted his head back and his greasy hair brushed Remus’s fingers as the strands fell away from the back of his head.

Remus squeezed tentatively, then harder as Snape leaned into the macabre caress. He felt Snape’s hardness press through their robes and Snape bent backward, pulling them both toward the bed. They collapsed on top of it, Remus really choking him now, and Snape’s legs kicked in a spasmodic dance. He bucked against Remus frenetically, and soon Remus found himself pushing back, just as excited.

He was careful to ease up just enough that Snape could draw uneven, laboured breaths. Snape thrust his throat into Remus’s cupped hand, and his sheathed cock into Remus’s spread groin, with a rocking, forceful rhythm. Remus locked his gaze on Snape’s eyes. The black irises reflected the window panes and told him nothing, but Snape’s face grew redder and his desperate thrusts came more quickly. He clenched his teeth and screamed through them with what little air he had, and Remus felt the heat between them increase. A second later he could smell Snape’s orgasm. He made to scramble off the bed, but Snape gripped both hands around him. He eased his hand off Snape’s neck and nudged Snape’s hip to let him lie to one side. Snape allowed him this revision.

‘You’ll need a high collar tomorrow,’ Remus heard himself say strangely. He hated to think it, but he could feel his own arousal poking at the fly of his pants. He told himself it was mainly physical proximity, and perhaps a bit of wish fulfilment for mock-strangling Snape.

‘No kidding,’ Snape said a minute later when his breathing had slowed.

Remus could have slapped his forehead. Snape nearly always wore high collars. He wondered if anyone else had done this with him. He decided that was absurd.

‘Are we done?’ he asked instead, perfunctorily.

Snape swivelled his head to meet Remus’s eyes. Remus still could not fathom the black depths. Snape nodded. ‘We’re done,’ he said, and something about it made Remus think he didn’t just mean this time, or this activity. There was something much, much more final to the two simple words.

‘Wait a minute,’ Snape said, sitting up. ‘I’ll have to walk you out or the others might think you’re unescorted.’

_Interesting_ , Remus thought. So Regulus was Snape’s only accomplice, so far. Snape walked across the room to a wardrobe and pulled out a fresh robe, then, to Remus’s surprise, he tapped his wand to a trunk at the foot of another bed, rummaged for fresh clothes, and tapped the trunk locked again. ‘Stay here,’ he said before leaving the room.

Remus looked at the trunk at the foot of the bed they had used. It belonged to Rodolphus Lestrange. 

TBC….


	30. In which a little excitement goes a long way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bearing the Standard

Remus never told Sirius what had happened. Snape walked him to the common room entrance and he had gone straight back to Professor Dee’s classroom, where Sirius was still unconscious. He had revived him and helped him to the hospital wing.

‘Why didn’t you cover me, Moony?’ Sirius asked on the way.

‘I’m sorry, Sirius; Snape distracted me. We fought and then he ran away. By then, Regulus had gone.’

Sirius accepted this as the natural order of things, and Remus reasoned it was close enough to the truth. More importantly, after that, it seemed Snape not only kept his word, he called off the war against the Gryffindor seventh-year players.

Two weeks later, on the day of the Quidditch Final, Sirius announced he rather liked the short hairstyle. It had grown to a bristly half inch or so all ’round, and he claimed that it was more convenient for playing. ‘Doesn’t get in my way,’ he commented, passing the shave off as if he had planned it all along.

Peter and Remus climbed into the stands to watch the match. ‘Where’s Lily?’ Remus asked. 

Peter shrugged. ‘I’m sure she’ll catch us up. Let’s find a place to sit.’

Gideon and Fabian Prewett came by shortly after they found seats.

‘Could we sit with you?’ Gideon asked. ‘We’re supporting Gryffindor,’ he added, as if that would make a difference.

Remus shrugged and Peter pointed vaguely to the empty spaces to his right. The twins split, Gideon going to sit next to Remus on the left, and Fabian taking up the spot Peter had indicated. He asked Peter a few questions about the camera, and soon they were deep in conversation together.

‘How have you been?’ Remus asked Gideon.

‘All right. Did I tell you that I asked Marcia Huntley out? She said yes.’

‘Good,’ Remus said encouragingly. They had talked about his attraction to her on their last date.

‘I made a banner,’ Gideon pipped, ‘for today. Do you think you could hold one end?’

‘Certainly,’ Remus answered. Gideon reached into his bag and pulled out yards of scarlet fabric. ‘This is gigantic!’ Remus cried as Gideon spread it over both their laps.

‘Yeah...I wasn’t sure it would be big enough.’

‘Hey, Peter, I think you might get a better angle from down over there,’ Fabian was saying to Peter. Peter nodded, stood, and ventured down a few rows toward the Slytherin goal. Fabian slid over on Remus’s other side. ‘Here, I’ll hold part of that,’ he offered.

The teams flew onto the pitch and took up their positions at the centre. Madam Hooch released the Snitch and the Bludgers, tossed the Quaffle in the air, and blew her whistle shrilly. The players kicked off from the ground again, and Gideon and Fabian held their ends of the banner aloft.

Remus kept his eyes on the match. There was Kingsley, zooming up the pitch toward a Bludger. James tossed the Quaffle to Frank Longbottom. Sirius slapped the second Bludger toward the Slytherin goal posts. He sucked his teeth when Frank narrowly cleared the Slytherin keeper and dumped the Quaffle through the goal.

Gradually, Remus became aware that Gideon’s hand rested on his leg. He glanced over, but Gideon’s concentration rested with the players in the air. Remus went back to the match. A few minutes later, Gryffindor scored another goal. All three of them jumped up from their seats, brandishing the banner. When they sat back down, Gideon put his hand on Remus’s inner thigh.

‘Gid--’

‘Shhh,’ Gideon told him. ‘Don’t give it away. Why do you think the banner’s so big?’ He slid his hand closer to Remus’s crotch.

Fabian leaned in close. ‘Gideon likes to be a bad boy,’ he said directly into Remus’s ear. ‘He likes people to think that he’s all squeaky-clean, but really, he’s just a vulgar, indecent little strumpet.’

Remus’s eyes slid to regard Fabian out of his peripheral vision, though his face remained pointed straight ahead. ‘Are you.... You knew about this?’ he asked.

‘The noise in the stands is perfect,’ Gideon told him. ‘But if you show it, it’ll ruin everything.’ He made a show of dropping his quill. As he leaned down to pick it up, he pulled Remus’s robes over his knees. He sat back on the bench, concealing the state of Remus’s robes behind the banner.

‘Tell Gideon he’s being too obvious. He’s going to be caught. Of course, that’s probably what he wants.’ 

Gideon chuckled. ‘Tell Fabian he’s the one with the dirty mind, Remus. This was his idea. He’s a sick, sick little fuck.’

‘Little?’ Fabian glared at Gideon across Remus. ‘You’re hardly one to talk. With that tiny thing you call a penis. Remus, have a feel of this.’ He took Remus’s hand in his and placed it against his crotch. ‘Now, that’s a proper cock. One you can really have a wank to.’

Remus had the bizarre feeling of being at centre field in a disturbing Quidditch match in which he was the Snitch. The brothers accosted him in tandem, using the banner as a shield. They spoke over him, but as much _to_ him as to each other.

‘Fabian would go down on you right here, Remus, if you let him.’

‘Gideon wants to sit in your lap, Remus. He wants you to plunge your cock up into his tight little hole, wants you to fuck him over and over in front of all these people.’

‘Fabian’s a talented slut. Let him show you what he can do with his tongue. He could lick you ’til you’re hard and leaking, Fabe could. He’s drooling for it already, look at him.’

‘Gideon’s about to come in his pants, but he’ll hold himself back for you, Remus. He’ll hold back and do as he’s told like an obedient little slave. He likes to be ordered about, our Gideon. Go on, Remus. Tell him how you want him spread out in front of you. Tell him to stroke himself hard and then wait for you to give him permission to come. Tell him to spread his perfect, round cheeks so you can break him open with your cock.’

‘Fabe hasn’t seen your cock, Remus. He doesn’t know how beautiful you are when you’re fucking someone. Not like I do. But he’s been begging for it for months. He dreams about your cock up his arse, Remus. He dreams you’ll take him someday the way you took me. Touch him and see how he’ll shudder at the contact. Just one brush of your fingers, and he could come all over himself.’

Remus closed his eyes and tried to catch his breath. The double-team act had him about crazed with various emotions. He was both reviled and incredibly stimulated by the idea of taking both twins on at the same time. As repulsed by the concept of incest as he was, he knew how talented Gideon was, and Fabian gave every indication that he’d be just as incredible. Truth be told, he’d suspected something back when he first seduced Gideon, from some of the things he’d said. The confirmation was oddly anticlimactic. Part of him wanted nothing better than to take them back to the castle right now. Bizarrely, though, part of him insisted they remain rooted to the spot, because he didn’t want to miss James and Sirius’s last Quidditch match. And while he wasn’t sure he could wait, he also felt both aroused and uncomfortable about going forward in such a public place.

Gideon and Fabian didn’t give him much time to make a choice. Gideon hooked his foot underneath Remus’s leg and pulled it toward himself. His hand wandered into Remus’s lap, stroking lightly. His other hand mirrored the motion to direct Remus’s hand. Fabian dropped to his knees on another pretext and crawled inside the blanket of the banner. He tucked his legs under the bench and opened Remus’s fly.

‘Hold the banner over your lap,’ Gideon told him. ‘Fabian’s so eager. Do you feel his tongue on you already? Is he sucking your prick? Fabian’s a champion at that.’ He looked down at the bulge under Remus’s robes, visible only from right next to Remus. ‘Suck him, you slut. Remember that the crowds are looking elsewhere, there’s enough noise, but they could see you any minute. Does that excite you, bitch? You like the taste of him, don’t you? And you’re going to drink him down like wine, aren’t you, because you’re such a dirty, sick little thing. Are you as hard as you’ve made him? How does it feel? You should see Remus’s face now, Fabe, you should see how he’s using all his concentration not to react to what you’re doing to him. Remus, is he driving you mad with that able tongue?’

Remus nodded, eyes fixed on Sirius as he zoomed around the pitch. 

‘You’re driving him mad, Fabian,’ Gideon continued. He inched closer to Remus and held the banner up a bit higher. ‘You love this, don’t you? Is he using his hands, Remus? He’s supposed to use his hands, too. He said he wanted to jam his pudgy fingers up your sweet, pink hole.’

‘Gideon,’ Remus breathed. ‘I think there’s a law against someone your age talking like that.’

Gideon smiled like the cherub Remus knew he certainly was not. ‘But you like it, right?’

Fabian sped up his stroke and Remus felt the suction increase a notch. ‘Yes!’

Luckily, Jennifer Tinslow had just caught a spectacular pass from James, because several people looked over at Remus’s outburst. Peter was still snapping photos near the barrier.

‘I shouldn’t like this,’ Remus insisted softly. ‘I should not be liking this.’

‘But you do,’ Gideon beamed. ‘I knew you would! You like the thought that Fabian’s sucking your nuts off right now, and you love that I’m saying all these things to you and you love knowing that we’re doing it with all these people around.’

‘Oh, gods,’ Remus breathed. ‘Bugger! Yes, I do.’

Gideon jumped up and clapped his hands, pretending to applaud another Gryffindor goal. When he sat down again, he said into Remus’s ear, ‘Put your hands on me, Remus. Stroke me off while my brother’s sucking you.’

Remus closed his eyes and moved his hand. Fabian was close, getting closer. It took a supreme act of will to keep from bucking his hips on the bench, to _not_ fuck Fabian’s oh-so-capable mouth. He leaned forward as if entranced by the Quidditch, holding the banner with one hand so that he could touch Gideon with the other. He desperately wanted to pet Fabian, to pull him closer, to smooth back his hair, but he couldn’t call attention to the boy between his legs. Instead, he imagined that the cock next to his was his own. He leaned into Fabian’s skilful tongue.

‘So close now,’ Gideon said. ‘If we were alone, I’d take you from behind while Fabian finished you off. I’d push you forward onto your hands and knees with Fabe underneath you. I’d scratch my fingers down your back as I slam into you, over and over. When you come into Fabian’s mouth, you know, he’ll scream. You’ll feel the hot vibration inside even as you shoot into him.’

Remus whimpered to keep from screaming. Gideon was right. They heard Fabian, muffled three times by Remus’s cock, their clothes and the banner, and the surrounding crowd. Remus shuddered and could barely keep from jerking forward off the bench. Fabian dislodged his lips from around his spent prick. He felt a few warm licks, then Fabian’s dry hands rearranging his fly. He ducked down into the stands, in an empty spot below them, and emerged near the barrier a few seconds later. He began to chat merrily with Peter as if nothing had happened.

Gideon sighed. ‘Fabe’s not much of one for afterglow,’ he said, sounding wistful. ‘Don’t stop, Remus. Do me, quick, before they catch the Snitch.’ He pointed to the left corner of the pitch, where both Seekers dove for the tiny golden ball. 

Remus cupped Gideon’s testicles and squeezed a bit. He stroked quickly, fisting around Gideon’s thin shaft under his robes. He pulled desperately, fighting to keep his rhythm strong, his eyes on the pitch, and his posture straight. So frenzied was his effort that he had to stop himself for fear of hurting Gideon.

‘I can’t, I’m--’ 

‘Yes! Yes!’ Gideon cried, stamping his feet. Remus could see a wet spot forming against Gideon’s robes, but Gideon leapt up with the banner. ‘Gryffindor won the cup!’

‘Sit down and clean yourself up!’ Remus said, pulling Gideon down by his arm. And then, ‘Gryffindor won!’ he shouted with elation. He grabbed the banner and waved it like a madman.

‘Gryffindor won!’ Peter whooped and ran back to them from the barrier, Fabian in tow. They jumped around in the stands, celebrating. 

‘There’ll be a party tonight, that’s for sure!’ Peter bellowed triumphantly.

‘And will that party include any Magical Matchmaking?’ a voice said next to them. Peter and Remus both turned guiltily.

‘What?’

‘I said, will that party include any Magical Matchmaking?’ Sarah Derwent asked imperiously. She was with Veronica Seton at the head of a whole group of girls from the upper classes, from all four houses. ‘We know the truth, Pettigrew, Lupin. We want to know why we haven’t got dates through your service, when others have been matched. We want to know why you decided to meddle. And most of all, we want to know what you intend to do to make it up to us.’

 

To Be Concluded....


	31. In which the Marauders settle the score

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Grand Charade

Remus and Peter stared at the group of young women. ‘What sort of proof?’ Remus asked warily.

Jessica Mountworth, a Gryffindor seventh-year, held up a sheaf of parchment. ‘Lily accidentally let slip to Jill Abbott that Magical Matchmakers had gone out of business. I don’t know how she’d have known that without knowing them personally. And Melinda Hinsdale has been telling everyone for weeks she thought the whole thing was a hoax. Isn’t it true that you’ve been suddenly dating a few new people? You and Sirius are still together, though, right? Now what would have possessed you to go looking for dates when you have him? So I went and looked, just now while everyone was here at the match. I found these letters in your dormitory.’ She brandished the parchment. 

Veronica Seton chimed in. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

Peter held up both hands. ‘We’ve just won the cup. There will be a party in the tower for sure. Come at six o’clock and we’ll let you in and we can talk about it.’

‘All right, but we’re warning you. We demand either satisfaction or our money back.’

Peter assured them all would be well and they trooped away. He turned to Remus. ‘I have a plan, but we’ll need help.’

Remus invited Gideon and Fabian, and they all left the stands to find James and Sirius and congratulate them. Then Peter drew them aside and explained the situation as they walked back to the changing rooms. Lily found them there, panting, saying she had just found out that the girls knew, and had left the match to try to keep them out, but was too late.

‘I just ran back down here. I couldn’t stop them. I’m so sorry!’ she said.

‘It’s okay, Lil,’ James and Remus both said together. ‘I guess we didn’t cover our tracks nearly as well as usual,’ Remus continued.

‘Meanwhile, I have an idea about giving them their satisfaction,’ Peter said, taking charge. ‘Sirius, I need you to go get several bottles of Old Ogden’s.’

‘Right!’

‘You’re going to get them drunk?’ Remus asked, frowning.

‘I’m going to get everybody drunk. James, can you sneak down to the greenhouses and get some dreamswort?’

‘Probably,’ James answered.

‘Excellent. Remus, we’re cutting your hair.’

 

At six o’clock, the young women arrived at the party. By then, everyone else was so cheerful, they didn’t notice the additional people. Peter brought out the whiskey and began doling it out to people a thimbleful at a time. They had slipped down to the kitchens for food, but were careful that it would not interfere with their plans. Remus pulled Bill Weasley aside and enlisted him as well. The two of them slipped upstairs to the remainder of the bottled and corked Polyjuice Potion.

‘Are you sure this will work?’ Bill asked Remus. 

‘I hope so. We’ve spent the money for supplies for another project. Besides, Peter wants to get rid of it. It’s too big a liability.’

They brought the bottles into the bedroom and Remus took out the packet of his hair, clipped earlier that afternoon. They came back down to the common room.

Peter saw them and poured fresh shots of Firewhiskey for anyone who wanted it. Then James drew the girls aside.

‘Look, it’s not that we didn’t try to match you up, truly,’ he said, Lily at his side. ‘But honestly, did you really think you’d get anywhere asking for Remus?’

Sarah crossed her arms. ‘That’s hardly the point. What you were doing is wrong, and I’m sure it’s against the school rules.’

‘Well, if it’s so wrong, why did you send in your letters?’ Lily asked. ‘Are you all seriously saying you’re going to try to get the boys in trouble unless Remus sleeps with you?’

They looked at one another and a few might have backed down, but Sarah, Jessica, and Veronica all glared at the others. ‘Yes,’ they said as one.

Lily sighed. ‘Very well. Have another drink. Stay here and we’ll see what we can do.’

She and James came over to Remus, who motioned to Peter, Sirius, Bill, and the Prewetts.

‘They wouldn’t back down,’ James reported. ‘Everyone ready?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay. The supply will be here. Lily will stay with it to make sure no one drinks it by accident, and to make sure that you take extra doses when you need it.’

Sirius climbed up on a table and began a raucous, raunchy song to distract everyone while Bill, Gideon, Fabian, and Peter each took gulps of Polyjuice Potion laced with Remus’s hair. One by one, along with Remus himself, they slipped back to the crowd to clap and jeer at Sirius’s horrible fabliaux. Each one positioned himself near one of the girls who insisted on a chance with Remus.

The impostors and the real Remus drew each girl into a comfortable embrace, smiling at their chosen partner. When the five girls saw that Remus had come up to them, they smiled back, never looking around to notice their friends in the same position.

The party continued around them. The Remuses waited until the younger students tired and went to bed, but as the older ones drank, their contact became freer. James dimmed the lights for mood (and easier concealment of identity), and Bill, Gideon, Fabian, and Peter snuck back to Lily periodically to take additional drams of the potion.

Around nine, James brought out the dreamswort. They smoked it and Remus experienced a variant of the effects he had felt over the holidays when he and Sirius spent the evening with Ted and Andromeda Tonks. Instead of simple intoxication, however, the dreamswort influenced the subconscious and lowered inhibitions. In combination with the whiskey, James anticipated things would become rather cosy that evening.

The impostors took another dose of Polyjuice. One of them judged it time to get busy. He slid his hands under Veronica’s jumper, running a finger along the edge of her bra. James came over to Lily and sat her in his lap. A few other couples followed their example. Pairs of students soon draped over every available chair or sofa in the room. Remus number two or three ran his hands through Jessica’s hair. Remus mark four or five began tonguing with Sarah. Sirius, Frank, and Marina started up a threesome under the table.

It was the threesome that really started things getting even stranger. Remus and Jill fell off their sofa and rolled close to the three of them, and Remus paused to kiss Sirius before he returned to Jill. Jill crawled forward and petted Sirius and Frank pulled her into the pile. Remus stayed as well. Soon, Remus and Veronica joined the collection of limbs, and so did Remus and Sarah, Remus and Jessica, James and Lily, and Remus and Beatrice. All fifteen of them groped with hands, feet, tongues and lips. Soon it didn’t matter who was kissing, who was caressing. Everything was simple sensation, and sensation was good. 

They became aware of others on the periphery, watching, wanking, or petting the odd limb that protruded from the pile. Almost anyone in Gryffindor and still awake made some contact with the throng of people, all writhing together. 

Someone brushed Remus’s leg. He looked down at Bill Weasley, grinning lop-sidedly at him. Bill turned away and kissed Frank Longbottom’s bare back. Remus stroked Bill’s hip, then returned to Jessica’s throat, nibbling little bites that made her shudder down into her legs. He felt someone caress his buttocks and leaned into the touch. A third person rubbed his legs with a foot; a fourth pressed a hand to his neck and massaged sensually. Someone else tugged at his shirt and he lifted his arms to allow the garment to be pulled over his head. He saw Peter, on the other end of the pile, easing a pair of knickers off one of the girls, and reflected that Sirius and Peter were geniuses for starting this mass of activity before the Polyjuice ran out and wore off completely; the girls would have no idea when their date with “Remus” ended and the orgy began.

He flailed out with one hand and it closed on someone’s shoulder. Fabian Prewett, he believed, from the shape. He inched closer to include him in his menage with Jessica and gradually drew apart from them once they were engaged together. He picked his way around the group, patting an exposed hip here, smoothing the hair on someone’s arm there, until he reached Peter. He was engulfed in Veronica Seton’s cunt, and Sirius was right: her bush was shaved in a perfect heart shape. She undulated beneath Peter’s facile tongue, squeezing the buttocks of the people on either side of her. James’s right hand was on her left breast; Sirius’s hand cupped her right. Remus leaned across them to pet Sirius’s head.

‘Hey,’ Sirius said, looking up from the breast he was sucking.

‘Hey.’ Remus smiled back. He sidled in between Sirius and Marina and put his hand down between Sirius’s legs. Sirius hummed in pleasure. He ruffled Remus’s hair as he bent his head back to Marina’s nipple. Marina pointed her toes, whispering to Sirius to bite more. She thrust one leg between Remus’s knees and ground up against his balls.

More hands came at him from the side. Remus closed his eyes and simply enjoyed being touched, without worrying who was doing what. He cupped Sirius’s shaft in his hand and pumped lazily even as he rubbed himself against Marina’s knee. The world narrowed to hands, mouths, skin and tongues. Somehow he slid down between the two and he brought Sirius’s prick to his mouth. He felt someone else do the same to his cock, and bent his hips toward the unidentified partner. The mouth licked and sucked at him and then was replaced by another mouth - a different mouth. Different hands squeezed his balls. Sirius came in his mouth, and he leaned back against Marina’s thigh to find that she had moved away; it was someone else’s thigh. He felt the push of a finger against his arsehole and relaxed his muscle to assist. The mouth around him changed again, and this time, he could tell it belonged to James.

A second finger joined the first up his arse. Remus reached out blindly and his hands struck someone’s breast, someone’s cock. He stroked both. A set of lips kissed its way across his chest. He was twisted to one side, sitting in the palm of the hand fucking him, and James spread his legs apart for better access. The lips closed on his nipple, and another set clamped on his other one. He tried to count the number of people touching him, and could not get past four before he shook with sensation. James did that thing he did with the tip of his tongue and his slit, and he dropped off the precipice. His abdomen muscles contracted and all his limbs jerked into the air as he came.

He collapsed on the floor as his orgasm passed. He could dimly feel the hand retreat from his perineum, but he could not tell the moment when. He heard a few others moan deeply or give other signs that they, too, found release within the group. But before he could try to figure out who, he fell asleep in the afterglow. 

When he woke up, a blanket covered him and Sirius lay to his left, James to his right. He craned his head to look around. In the rust-coloured firelight, he saw Lily’s head near James’s, her hand curled loosely around the waist of Fabian Prewett. Bill’s red hair looked almost orange in the light, while Lily’s looked deep auburn in the shadows. Peter, Jessica, and Frank lay in a jumble, Peter’s foot resting lightly on Sirius’s leg. A few quiet snores echoed in the otherwise empty room.

He didn’t remember anyone leaving. He didn’t remember falling asleep, or when the others curled up around him, or when the blankets arrived or the house-elves cleaned up the detritus of the party. He didn’t know if they had left happy and satisfied, or ashamed and angry. He looked around at people whom he trusted, loved, and had loved. Tonight he was surrounded by other beings whose smells and sounds and sensations were fundamentally _right_. He was sated, and he was among a group who, under other circumstances, were the very thing he had searched for all his young life. They were lovers. They were friends. But more importantly to Remus, they were _pack_. And unlike other times, when James, Peter, and Sirius stayed with him in Animagus form, their journey this year had brought them to pile together this way in human shape, as well. Remus felt safe and among family to a greater extent than he had ever known home. Tomorrow, there would probably be more consequences to their actions. But tonight, he had his pack.

 

End


End file.
